


Beacon

by curtailed



Category: DCU, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drowning, Dysfunctional Relationships, Fear Play, M/M, Nightmares, Psychological Horror, Survival Alliance, Touch-Starved, Training, Unequal Pairings, Wet Dream, inappropriate tension, reference to apprentice arc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:21:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26957992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtailed/pseuds/curtailed
Summary: Alone in the apocalypse, it's easy to settle into a rhythm: avoid the roamers, fish for resources, sleep with one eye open. It's not much of a life. It's all Robin has.The alternative - an alliance with an old enemy, one that still terrorises his dreams - isn't exactly a step up either, but there's never been much of a choice in the first place.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson
Comments: 54
Kudos: 140





	1. Chapter 1

It was always the right arm. Bruce had taught it as a grappling technique then, twisting the wrist until the elbow was locked at the center of the spine, immobilizing almost a quarter of the body. It was painful the first time, and Robin remembered crying out softly -- the first and only time he did so in practice -- and Bruce immediately letting go. 

Now, though, cold hands clamped at his forearm, twisting the arm onto his back and up, up, _up_ \-- a sharp crack wrenched across his right shoulder blade, and it was the easiest thing in the world for Robin to cry out, the sound drifting into the shadows. The stairwell swam before him, dark and empty. He tried to hit back, tried to struggle, but his other arm felt as limp and lifeless as a noodle.

" _Stop,_ " he gasped, his heart beating hard in his eardrums. "Stop, _stop,_ you're hurting me -- "

Slade let him go then. He stumbled blindly down a step, whirling around -- and the fist socked him straight across the nose. He barely blocked the second punch, the third, blinking blood out of his eyes, each blow spending sparks of pain into his core. The fourth planted itself square in his gut. The world tilted for a terrifying, dizzying moment, and he felt like his lungs had imploded.

Slade shoved him halfway across the rail, and Robin gasped out in pain again as the metal cut into his back.

"Too much for you, Robin?"

Another strike. Another dodge. Robin lashed a kick at Slade's knee, hoping to at least stagger him. His foot hit empty air. 

"Or maybe you've gotten weak," Slade mused. The shadows shifted on his mask, rippling around the edges. "You haven't had someone like me in a long time."

"Shut _up_."

"No one fights like this, do they?" Slade's hand moved so quickly, that for a moment Robin thought it had disappeared all together -- fingers latched onto his collar, knotting it tightly, dragging him forward by the toes. Reflexively Robin reached up and tugged at an armoured wrist. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't _breathe._ Blood rushed to his chest, his fingers, his face, and all around him the room blurred into haze. He kicked out uselessly, his legs swinging in nothing.

Slade stared at him, one eye almost contemplative.

"How does it feel, Robin, to be so close to dying?"

In the waking world, Robin thought hazily, he had managed to switch the lights on. He remembered falling into Starfire's warm embrace, into the voices and arms of his friends. Here, it was only a dark, gnawing coldness that greeted him. Slade's grip was relentless. The fingers tightened, twisted, and for a moment Robin thought Slade would snap his neck --

Slade let him go. 

Occasionally the dreams gave him the mercy of waking before the impact came. Robin fell, and fell, watching Slade disappear into a silhouette, and the sound of his spine shattering rang in his ears long after he woke.

.

.

.

"You're evicting me," Robin said flatly, before the man -- _Isaac, 37, single daughter, good with handgun --_ even opened his mouth. 

"I...I'm trying not to put it like that." Isaac held out his hands in an imploring gesture. Behind him the sun rose slowly, a single pale beam cutting across the window, filling the man's face with a ghostlike aura. "I'm really not forcing you, if you...it's just that -- "

"I scavenge too much supplies for you?" Still, Robin's body was already on autopilot. Isaac watched wide-eyed from the threshold as Robin systematically shook out weapons and gadgets from the pillowcase.

"I thought I told you that no weapons were allowed in the rooms."

"Considering you're kicking me out, I'm pretty sure the rules don't matter to me anymore." Socks, boots, gloves. The mask always stayed on. He clipped his belt, raising an eyebrow at Isaac. "Did I miss anything? Do I get killed now, or what?"

"What?"

"I must've done something," Robin said, trying not to show irritation. "Last week I pulled in twelve crates of food and first aid to the residents. What's the deal here, Isaac? Do I have something valuable that you want to steal off my corpse?"

"No!" Isaac held up his hands in alarm. A prick of guilt stabbed Robin in the chest, but he didn't let it show on his face. "It's just...we...we don't know what you want."

Robin paused, waiting.

Isaac inhaled a deep breath, as if he was trying to steel himself into the speech. "You're...you're an unfamiliar face, but you have all this...technology, and you're better trained than even the best men and women here. Some of them were soldiers. And -- " Isaac started coughing, panic clear in his tone. "You're an _enigma._ "

"You don't think you can trust me." It wasn't too bad of a reason, Robin supposed, even if it made him clench his teeth a little. "You think I'm dangerous." 

"I -- "

"And whose genius idea was it to _tell_ this dangerous kid, then?"

"They'll try to kill you at noon." Time was barely discernible outside, but Robin knew that a single, dusty clock still ticked away in the main room. "They think you're going to turn on us first, and they want to prevent that."

"If I wanted to do that, I'd have done so."

"I explained that to them! I trust you." _But not enough to let me stay._ "I just -- I wanted to warn you. That's all."

"Mm." Robin slid open a drawer slowly, sliding the birdarangs into the belt. Staff, cape, cube, grapple, rucksack -- he petted down his belt, checking his inventory. Isaac's eyes were practically the size of plates. "Is there anything else you need to say to me?"

Isaac flinched from Robin's tone. 

Robin wrested down his anger, and lightly put his hand on Isaac's shoulder. "Sorry," he said, his smile tight, "I get it. It's not that big of a deal to me. I've gotten kicked out, like, four times by now."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's not your fault." The hallways were still quiet; what was left of the apartment building thrummed in silence, the stillness only punctuated by the cold creak of a pipe. The air was cooler in the corridor. Isaac trailed soundlessly after Robin, both of their steps padded and soft against the floorboards. A staircase twisted its way down to the musty main room, where the walls were alight with the sun's sickly glare. A girl a few years younger than him glanced up at their arrival from a ratty couch. 

"Is he leaving, Dad?" Without waiting for Isaac's response, Anna leapt into Robin's arms, squeezing him hard around the middle. "I'll miss you. I'll miss you so much."

"I'll miss you too, Anna. Maybe I'll see you around sometime." He doubted it.

Anna sniffed as she withdrew from the embrace. "Here. Dad didn't want to give it to you, but I thought you should have it."

She held up to him a poorly-wrapped package. Judging by the smell, it was probably food, if a few days after their expiration date. Robin had to smile.

"Thanks, kid."

.

.

.

Robin finished the package by noon.

Kids always liked to give food. Robin chewed on the piece of stale bread as he walked, his other hand always resting on his belt. If he ignored his peripheral vision, pretended the smell of cold, dead things was simply a phase, he could almost believe that the city was the same. The alleyways remained their somber grey, the trash cans long looted and abandoned, and he brushed a gloved finger along the wall. It was coated in a black, dripping substance that clung onto the fabric. 

The alleyways opened onto Main Street. Every city had a Main Street, Robin thought ruefully, even when he didn't even know where on the world he was. Humidity hinted near the coast; the hollowed ruins bespoke a metropolis. He couldn't be sure. Maybe he could measure the angle of sun and moon, or map out the stars, but he'd never properly learned navigation. He had always thought that he'd have his locator. 

West. He was on the west side of the city. It was still dark, still empty, and Robin hastened to move himself off the streets. Less of a target. Vacant shops and buildings drifted by him, the windows shattered and children's toys littered all over the pavement. Some parts of the ground slanted upward, like a massive fault line gone wrong, crumpling the stone walls into a mess of construction. Above, the sky continued to bleed a dark violet-red, with only the sun weakly suffusing into boiling, iron-grey clouds. Fissures spiraled across the avenue, and Robin tried not to peer into the crack -- inside was only an endless chasm. The Peak loomed in the distance, the crimson summit disappearing into a ring of clouds. No matter how closer Robin tried to reach, it remained the same distance.

And the _smell._ The smell always hung in the air, a persistent miasma that refused to go away. The first time Robin had smelled it, he had dropped onto his knees and threw up for what felt like half an hour. Now it burned deep in his lungs, the smell of cold rot and decay, permeating deeply into his clothes and skin. If he ever got out of here, he doubted he would ever wash the smell away. Blood always swirled down the drain; scars faded over time. The smells took hold in your memory, your brain, and burned into each nerve until the day you died.

The last of the bread stuck a little bit in his throat. Robin coughed softly, doing his damn best not to make any noise. 

Silence. Eerie, depressing silence, a far cry from even the quiet rumble of Isaac's place. A strip of water poured perpendicular to the street, the water bubbling and filthy green. The remnants of a broken dam. Robin hated it, hated the quiet, hated how much he had to prowl on his toes, never daring to put his full weight on the ground. Roamers avoided the complexes, the big groups -- they weren't many of them, anyways, and they shied away from the sun.

Alone, though...

 _I need to find another base._ Robin didn't exactly prefer that option either; sleeping with one eye open, never turning his back on anyone. He knew how valuable his gadgets were, how much harm they could do in the wrong hands. He _needed_ them. Only for usefulness, he told himself as he slinked by another set of ruins, but he knew better. He couldn't count how many times he had fallen asleep holding a remnant of a previous world -- the staff Batman had gifted him, the tools that Cyborg had fashioned for him on his birthday, the the tome Raven had given him, the rucksack that Beast Boy had sewn, the gloves Starfire had patched up, and --

 _No,_ he told himself, _hating_ himself, but his fingers lightly enclosed around the cube. It was small, enough to easily fit in his palm, glassy and dark. Brittle, but compact. It slid smoothly along his skin. He remembered how he had received the cube, almost a year after Raven's birthday.

"What is it?"

"A cube," Slade had replied flatly. The old haunt was long covered in dust, the massive gears forever still, but goosebumps had still crawled up Robin's spine. Slade had rested rather casually on the gear's teeth on the top of the pile, watching Robin peering from below. "I assume you know what that was."

"Don't try to trick me," Robin had snarled, even as his hand automatically closed around it. "It's a bomb, isn't it? Some kind of bug? Poison?"

"Then why would I directly give it to you?" Slade didn't laugh much, but when he did the softness of it made every hair on Robin's neck stand on edge. "It's a gift, Robin. Don't look into the horse's mouth."

"What, like Terra's suit?"

"Nothing like that at all." Slade was uncharacteristically silent for a moment, and the dry, mocking edge had lessened when he next spoke. "You'll need it."

"Like I would ever accept anything _you_ gave me -- "

"Raven's apocalypse is not the first," Slade spoke over him, single grey eye cool on Robin's. "Trigon is gone, but in his absence are other creatures. Few are as powerful as him, but they're attracted here. This world has too many weak spots and too many people to feed on."

"...another apocalypse?"

Slade shrugged one shoulder. "My time in Hell might have been brief, but I know that there are things coming your way. Things worse than Trigon. Things worse than _me._ "

"I'm not scared of you," Robin spat.

"I never said you were." Slade straightened from his spot, and for a single, tense moment Robin shifted his stance, chastising himself for being stupid enough to show up to the spot alone. But Slade had simply glanced back at him, the eye thinning in what could almost be amusement, before he disappeared into the shadows. Only the creak of the gear, and the cube in Robin's hand, gave away any hint that he had been here at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imean, I haven't even WATCHED like all of the movies but this is absolutely a reference to Nightwing getting his arm dislocated like a champ
> 
> Please leave a comment!


	2. Chapter 2

"Who'd you want by your side in an apocalyse?"

Three files on his left. Three on his right. Robin pulled off his gloves, flexing his fingers, letting blood circulate back into his hands. He didn't know how long he had sat on the sofa, the sun breaking brilliantly over the horizon, but now a cold, gradual numbness had seeped up from his thighs.

_Who is Slade?_

"Uh -- helloooo? Earth to Robin?" A green hand blurred in front of him. Robin barely registered it. Exhaustion sank into every corner of his mind, and dimly he realized his hand was shaking when he readjusted his mask.

"Beast Boy." He needed some water; his voice cracked from how parched his throat was. "Did you say something?"

"Yeah, I was just asking."

"Asking about what?"

"Leave him alone, Beast Boy." Cyborg's voice was dry with amusement, but something else colored his tone. _Worry._ "I don't even think he slept last night."

"Geez, that sounds bad. Robin, are you sure you don't want to -- "

"No. _No,_ I'm fine," he snapped, when a hand rested lightly on his shoulder. The restless, gnawing irritation growing inside his gut subsided a little when he saw Starfire's green eyes staring at him. From this closeness, he could feel her hair brushing his arm. A light, unfamiliar warmth crept up his neck.

"Um."

"Beast Boy is right," Starfire stated, gazing hard at Robin's face. "You look very tired, Robin. You should withdraw to your bedroom."

"Star, I'm fine. I promise."

"You are not fine! You have been studying Slade all night." The hand on his shoulder moved up his neck, tracing his cheek. Robin thought he heard Beast Boy gag somewhere, but it was getting harder and harder to focus when her fingers trailed along his jaw --

\-- and pinched his nose. Robin tried to conceal his yelp, twisting away, but Starfire giggled softly. Despite the mild pain, her laugh broke through the fog in his head like sunlight. 

"Alright. Fine." He had to smile. "I'll go off in a few minutes." He turned to Beast Boy. "What were you saying, again?"

"He's asking which one of us you'd pick to survive an apocalypse." This time, Robin _did_ yelp -- maybe that was how tired he was, if he was getting caught off-guard so easily -- as Raven levitated in lotus position, the ray of sunlight catching the fringe of her cloak. He hadn't even notice her entering the common room. 

"...what?"

"The apocalypse, dude!" Beast Boy made a _awkward, stiff_ zombie posture, holding his arms out before him. "Me and Cyborg were just watching one of those movies."

"Oh. Huh."

In moments like these, Robin thought he could just sink into the sofa, and let the voices wash over him. Calm, soothing, like the lapping of the tide.

"I...I don't know. Who would you pick?"

"Well," Raven said from her position, " _not_ Beast Boy, that's for sure. He'd eat all the food."

"I would _not!_ "

"Oh, really? Then where's the brioche Cyborg bought yesterday?"

"I -- I -- " Beast Boy stuttered. "Well, I wouldn't pick _you_ , either! Who cares if you can fly or teleport or lift entire buildings..." He seemed to realize his stance, and his ears drooped in defeat. "Okay. Maybe you."

Raven didn't say a word, but the smugness radiated from her in thick waves. 

"What about you?" Robin turned to Cyborg. Something dull pulsed at the base of his skull.

Cyborg grinned. "No question. Starfire." 

"Really?" Starfire exclaimed, smiling widely.

"Why not? You can fly -- "

"So can I," Beast Boy grumbled.

"And you have a large energy source." Cyborg gestured one hand to the other. "If we could collect enough scrap metal, I could try building some sort of compressed radiation generator fueled from your bolts...and you're definitely strong enough to haul around any bulk components." He frowned a little. "But you _are_ allergic to large quantities of chromium, and steel's defintely something that I need if I wanted to conduct a --"

Beast Boy pretended to snore loudly.

"I'd choose Cyborg," Raven said, settling herself on the ground. Beast Boy sputtered in indignation. "He could probably make some sort of zombie vaccine in a few days. I wouldn't worry for the world."

"Well, thanks, Raven." Raven shrugged at that.

Beast Boy made a small, grumbling sound. "Seriously? No one wants to pick me? That's harsh."

"I'd pick you!" Starfire grinned, poking at Beast Boy, who reflexively transformed into a tiny, hissing cat. "You have very funny jokes, and you would be good company. And," she continued, as Beast Boy transformed back into his normal self, "you could become all sorts of things! If we were captured, you could simply become a large dinosaur and burst us free."

Slightly mollified, Beast Boy flicked imaginary dust from his shoulder. "That's cool. Yeah. That is _definitely_ what I do best."

"I would pick Robin, too."

Beast Boy rolled his eyes. Robin smiled a little, the weight of Slade's files easing from his mind. _Who is Slade? Who is behind the mask?_ Questions he could answer later, not when the sun rose and filled the room with a rare, soft mellowness.

"I don't really have any powers, Starfire."

"No." She smiled at him as she sat on the couch's armrest. "But you have every gadget and tool under the sun. You are smart. You would figure some solution out." 

"I...that's generous, Star." The grin that came to his lips felt more natural than breathing. For a moment they all sat in silence, the only sound being the occasional whir of wires as Cyborg readjusted his position. 

Raven finally broke the silence. "Robin, what about you? You still haven't answered the question."

He laughed at that, relaxing his head against the back of the couch. "Do I have to answer that?"

"Yes," Cyborg quipped.

He laughed again, feeling Starfire's hair tickle his scalp. "I mean...I can't really choose, can I?"

"Hm?"

Later in the day, he thought, he would be running along the streets of Jump City again, cold concrete and metal grinding under his shoes. Maybe later Slade would emerge from the shadows, harsh, ruthless fingers twisting, beating, until the cold concrete and metal cracked. Low laughter, as he bled, broken and boneless. The stars would be lightless above. But for now, he rested in the light, stirring slightly as Starfire patted his hair. He reached up and touched her hand gently.

It was nice, to be like this. 

"Technically, all of you can fly, and Cyborg could built a jetpack or something." He slumped further. "But...yeah. All of you. I don't think I could survive the apocalypse for long -- not without you guys, anyway."

A quietness settled over them slowly.

"Sappy," Beast Boy finally commented, but he was grinning from ear to ear. Cyborg swatted at him.

.

.

.

An hour until sunfall.

Robin counted the minutes in the back of his head. Find a place to rest, first -- preferably somewhere high for the best vantage. Water drew the roamers; he'd have to avoid that. It couldn't be easily accessible by other people either, not unless he wanted a knife to be planted in his spine while he slept.

_Damn you, Isaac,_ he thought, before feeling guilty. He couldn't blame it all on the man. 

Still, he had survived outside of settlements several times. He'd be fine. He needed some food first, if he wanted to get up fresh. A convenience store lurked at what used to be a corner. A sign creaked at him, written in a language he couldn't decipher. Inside, most of the shelves had been looted, and the windows shattered, but a few wraps of presumably stale tortillas rested on a stand. He swiped them into his rucksack.

Water. Water was more important. Slowly, quietly, Robin wandered along empty, gaping shelves -- he didn't expect to find any roamers, since they usually preferred wider spaces, but fear made his heart beat tensely. Along the way, he snatched whatever bits of food he could get his hands on. A granola bar. A half-full soda pop. A pack of strawberry bubble gum. Finally, he found what he wanted -- four untouched bottles of water, rolled under the counter stand for cigarettes. To his mild amusement, those had been raided as well. 

_Creak._

Robin stiffened, his hands frozen in further unzipping his rucksack.

That was...he strained his ears, trying to move as little as possible. It might have been the sign, or a stray pebble, or the stands going old with rust. Maybe a bent pipe.

Slowly, so damn slowly, Robin closed his eyes. _Analyze your situation with all five senses,_ Bruce had drilled into him so long ago. The store smelled stale and metallic, the gradual diffusion of air from rust and tarnish. Unused. Nothing tasted oddly in the air, so it was unlikely there were any strong chemicals or leaking gases. The ground felt smooth; unbroken, under his gloved fingers. No recent fights. No claw marks from roamers. No bullet marks from gunmen.

_Sight._ He slowly turned his head, scanning the aisles. Nothing. No one. The light was rapidly dimming outside. Soon, the store would be plunged into shadows.

_Sound._

Only his own breathing, quiet and deep in his lungs. Faster breaths meant a higher frequency of sound. He counted to ten in his head.

There was no one there. No one. It was just his stress wearing away at his brain. Still, Robin didn't dare to relax. Paranoia had kept him alive before, and it was why he still remained so. Carefully, his hand crawled to a birdarang at his belt.

_Creak._

He didn't move his head -- and it was that single, tight moment of stillness that he saw the movement.

It was so rapid that he could've blamed it on his eyelid twitching, or the shadows deepening, but he saw it. He _saw_ it.

A silhouette.

.

.

.

_Someone's following me._

Two streets down, three blocks wayward and out, one of the taller, abandoned buildings sloped close enough to the cliff face that Robin could crawl up into its higher landings from the ledges. The last glimmers of the sun flickered over a dead street. A single white bus lay upside down on its roof, each window shattered into pieces.

_That was a silhouette._

Someone. Someone had been following him. Robin entertained two trails of thought -- one, that it was someone who had recently picked up on interest. Maybe he wanted to steal Robin's supplies, or tools. It wasn't a savory thought, but it was more reassuring than the alternative -- that the person had been following him for quite some time, and only slipped up today.

It doesn't matter, he told himself as he scaled the slanted walls, crumbled mortar digging painfully into his gloved hands. He would have used the grapple, but the phantom fear of someone cutting the tether dissuaded him. _It doesn't matter. If he tries to attack me, I'll stop him._ _I've stopped worse._

High up in the air, he finally dared to turn around. The fringe of the city stretched before him -- some nameless, unknown municipal that he had grown mildly familiar with. Nothing like Jump City. Nothing like Gotham. It had none of the imprinted, bone-deep connection he could feel even when he wasn't conscious; the beat of the traffic, the tenor of the voices, the layout and gridwork of hundreds of structures. Here, the cliff faces were alien -- they ran along the inlet of sea, before wasting away into a salt-white mesa that graduated downwards into what remained of the woodlands. Small caves and homes had been carved on the faces. 

Robin took his time scouting one, mapping out the cave tunnels. Whoever his stalker was, it wouldn't be easy for them to follow him, not unless they wanted to risk plummeting hundreds of feet onto the ground.

_Unless they're as capable of climbing as you are._

Robin gritted his teeth.

By the time sunlight finally vanished, he had established his roost in a hollow facing the opposite curve of the cliffs, to where it looped partially around the city. It was a good vantage -- the steps that winded up here were steep and twisty, giving him ample time to escape if any roamers tried to use that route. A branched out from the hollow; it could be used for an escape pathway, if necessary. He made sure to scout the innermost lining -- it was the easiest to traverse, even if the front section of the walls felt crumbly. Susceptible to collapse.

Robin pulled out several tethers, sticking one down into the cracked ground as deep as it could possibly go. The air was dry here, strangely, despite being positioned near the sea. Another thing to chalk down to a world that didn't follow any semblance of rules. Another pin was stabbed in the walls, then in the ceiling -- he had to jump for that -- then several more, the tethers tightening as he looped each one around a successive pin. He took a step back to admire his handiwork. It wouldn't prevent a total collapse, but it would buy him some time.

Finally, Robin rolled out a mess of ratty, torn blankets on the stone ground. He'd have to swipe a bedroll someday, but Batman had trained him on sleeping on uncomfortable grounds. He slowly lowered himself onto the sheet, the exhaustion finally catching up from deep within his body. He looped one of the rucksack's straps around his arm, not daring to take off his uniform or cape. He couldn't afford comfort, not in this place. In the back of his mind, he saw the silhouette again, the briefest flash of a person.

_They can't follow you up here,_ he chided himself, rolling over on the sheet. He reached into his belt and pulled out the communicator, snapping it open. 

A blank screen stared back at him. Still no signal. Still no sign that the other Titans were alive. Robin slipped it back to his belt, trying to ignore the despair that threatened to swallow him alive. He had to keep it at bay. He couldn't let it win.

The cold stone dug into his shoulder, and something pricked at his hip. It was the sharp edge of the cube. Sleep tugged at his eyelids, and slowly, surely, he fell into a restless doze.

This time it was back at the old hideout. Gears turned, and turned, and the screens were metres high, glowing a dim red. The nanoprobes drifted almost lazily in the bloodstreams, the names of his friends blinking innocently at him. The hand twisting his hair had only been holding him in that position for a few moments, but it felt like hours, days, years, his heart pounding loudly in his eardrums, his knees digging hard into the floor.

Slade's laugh was cold. Lethal. "You end up on this position too often, Robin. One might think you're trying to say a message."

The hand pushed harder, even as another clamped his arm behind him, twisting. The screens pulsed, flickered. A boot planted itself at the centre of his spine, knocking him onto the ground.

"Don't," he rasped, his voice barely sounding human. Barely comprehensible.

Slade released him.

In an instant he twisted around and lunged, and the sound of his fist hitting Slade's armoured chest filled him with pure satisfaction. The satisfaction was short-lived; Slade's knee thrusted up, nailing him hard in the gut. The pain made Robin gasp loudly, blood clotting the back of his tongue. He struck furiously, remembering his training sessions --

_left, right, quick uppercut_ \--

His fingers hit metal, skin, deep into the flesh, into nothing. Slade wasn't there. He was behind, he was all around, the fist moving so fast that it seemed to have never moved at all. Something hard and brutal slammed into Robin's chest, just above his heart, right where Slade's insignia was strapped to the uniform. He could barely suck air into his lungs.

"Why are you fighting me, Robin?" 

"Don't hurt them!" Robin snarled, lashing out his fist at Slade's mask. Slade grabbed his wrist, his shoulder, wrenching his body back onto the ground. Robin snarled again, anger and pain and _fear,_ fear above all else, fueling his leg to kick at Slade's knee. Slade stumbled back, his eye widening in slight surprise.

"Hurt _them_?" This time the fist landed straight on Robin's nose. For a moment all he knew was white, blinding pain, lights flickering behind closed eyelids. He crumpled, his limbs twitching from the impact. He felt paralyzed; numb. Dread coiled in his stomach.

"They're already dead, Robin."

" _No...!_ "

"They've been dead a long time." Slade drew close, enough that Robin could see the colour of his single eye -- a pale, eerie grey, like the hue of bleached steel. Of ice and lifeless skin. Above the gears twisted, and turned, a hellish, muted rhythm that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. With his friends' heartbeats. Fingers wrapped around Robin's throat, even as Slade knelt over him. pinning him down by the neck. Weakly, Robin clawed at the wrist, his hands as effective as a doll's. Blood drained from his head.

"No..." he gasped, his voice frail. Pathetic.

" _Yes_ , Robin." Slade's voice was so close to his ear, the surface of the mask brushing his cheek. The dread flared into icy horror. "You _made sure of it_."

He woke suddenly, desperately, like he was drowning in a bottomless sea.

Already his body moved on autopilot in near pitch-darkness, leaping to his feet, rucksack bouncing hard against his back, even before his mind could catch up to his senses -- the pole already extended, birdarangs already in hand, as the walls trembled, vibrated, _screamed,_ with the pounding of roamers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more on roamers next chapter, i guess.
> 
> Please leave a kudos/comment if you enjoy!


	3. Chapter 3

_Fuck._

There wasn't much to say. The walls rippled -- Robin couldn't see it, not clearly, but he _felt_ it vibrate through his bones -- and a pale, ragged hand burst from solid stone. 

Robin acted on instinct. Already he was rolling, flinging out the birdarang, pinning the fingers back, building up momentum even as he swung the pole down on the outstretched arm with a sickening _crack._ The scream of pain that followed sounded like nails clawed across glass. He didn't have time to flinch, not when another arm tore through, the rent in the wall revealing a sliver of a contorted, half-rotting faces, the eyes sunken and wide and light blue. Human, once human, but the contortion of limbs, the jagged angles of bone, the way they half-limped, half-dragged themselves across the ground --

He struck it, _hard,_ the metal end of the pole pushing deep into skull and bone. It wouldn't be enough to kill, even if he could bring himself to do it, but it would buy him time.

_Run._

More bodies thrashed against the crack, desperate to break through. The walls rang with their screeches, their screams, and most hauntingly their sighs, as if they were falling asleep. An undeniably human noise. Robin sprinted for the escape tunnel, trying not to wince as his feet slipped along the ground. More screams. Something scraping, and a low, grief-stricken wail, like someone dying from the inside out.

It was so _dark._ Sunrise couldn't have been far, not if he was able to spot the arm, but the shadows blurred around him in glassy black streaks until his head pounded. He hadn't fully shaken off sleep either. 

_Where's the tunnel? It was here._ He groped out into the darkness, gloved fingers trailing along jagged edges of rock, the smooth contours of stone. Silt rubbed at his palms. _I know it was here. I know --_

His heart froze in his throat as his fingers closed around the tether.

The _severed_ tether.

"No," Robin muttered, even as panic swelled in his stomach. "No, _fuck_ no. No." The tether was snapped. It was _snapped._ If this one had broken, it meant the others...

The first roamer descended out of nowhere.

His body reacted before his mind did. Robin snapped up his pole, dodging two pale, sinewy arms even as the roamer staggered, as if drunk, the pole slamming it directly into the gut. Another slam. Another dodge. Robin jumped, boots and gloves slick against the walls, the floors, the air cool against his face even as he jabbed hard at the feet. Two kicks into the chest, and the roamer snarled, swiping at his leg. Pain rippled up his calf. With the sound of crunching, contorting muscle and bone, the roamer lunged again, its claws slashing almost mindlessly at Robin's heart. He _felt_ it graze the front of his clothes, felt the air ripple by as the blows missed, his chest tight from adrenaline --

"Stay _down,_ " Robin snarled, planting the pole hard onto where its shoulder blades would be. The crunch this time rang in his ears, even as the roamer slumped heavily. The blow wouldn't kill it, but it would keep it out of commission for a while. 

_Kill them,_ a voice urged in Robin's head. A voice that sounded far too familiar to the low, dark monotone in his nightmares. _Kill them, if you want to live._

Robin watched the roamer thrash minutely on the ground. It wasn't screeching or wailing anymore; it was a small, whimper of pain, like it was trying to keep it to itself. He couldn't tell what age the human within once had been, what gender or race or any sort of physical indicator. Now it was just a mess of bones and pale flesh moulded together, the eyes hollow and lifeless.

 _They have no qualms of killing you. They're_ mindless, _Robin._

 _And if they aren't,_ Robin shot back mentally, already sweeping the cave, _then I've killed someone._

Another tether. Something about the frayed end made Robin frown, but the pulsing of the walls made him hastily tuck the strands back into his belt. He'd investigate it later, assuming he made it out of the cave alive. He hadn't heard any collapse. He slung his rucksack onto the ground and pushed his hands through the lump of rock -- so the exit route was partially blocked, but not fully so if he still had mobility to adjust and shift the stone --

His fingers broke into the empty air. _There!_

He tugged at the loose piece of stone. Even through the gloves the edges dug into his skin; it would bleed later, but right now fear closed his nerves, his pain receptors. He tugged and pulled and _tugged._ There were seconds left. Seconds before the next roamers came. 

Five. Four. Robin gritted his teeth, a stiff pain wrenching up his arm. Three. His heart beat loudly, erratically, sweat collecting around his collar. _Explosives. I have some left._ Except they might bring the whole cave down, burying him in hundreds of feet of solid stone. Two. A roamer lunged, this one missing him by inches. _One._

Robin wrenched his staff into its two components, and charged.

 _Left, right,_ downward. The roamer avoided the first two swings, dodging with a chilling efficiency, but the third swing connected solidly on the temple. It gasped a little, as if in genuine, raw pain.

 _Mindless,_ the voice egged on.

Robin swung again, throwing himself to the ground. Crouch, then spring up -- he twisted from the shoulder, biting back a noise of pain as he struck the roamer across the shoulder. Disorient. Confuse. He leapt up, lashing a good, hard kick into the ribs. Knee to sternum next. A classical manuever -- he slammed the stick into the back of the roamer's neck, and it joined its brethen on the ground with a soft hiss of sound that stung down to his chest. 

_A few more seconds._

Individually, he could take down a roamer with moderate ease -- but it wasn't a single one, or a duo, or five. At least a dozen. Maybe two. Robin probed along the ridges of the rock, tugging, pulling, planting one foot on the rough, amorphous wall for leverage. Maybe he could grapple it, tie it down to --

If it weren't for his cape, the claw would have bisected his spine.

Robin's mind blanked out for a single, tight second, hazily trying to process the pain. It simmered low in his back, and then _scorched_ up to his neck, the sort of intense, flaring pain that made him feel like his back had been branded with live coals. A strangled sound choked from his mouth, and he tried to breathe, tried to breathe through the livid agony. 

_Fuck._ One more blow like that, and he might be crippled. And in this world, crippled was a death sentence.

The pain still lingered, and Robin did his best to block it. To shut it out. He had suffered worse hits before, from worser things. There must have been three, at least four roamers, and in such a tight space --

 _You're not as strong as me,_ Bruce had said, watching Robin pick his way across the trapeze wires in the training room. _Not as compact. You need to learn how to take blows, but you need to avoid them better._

Robin leapt, twisted -- plunged.

 _Congratulations, Robin._ Slade's single eye danced with cruel mirth, and Robin swore he could see the gears reflected in that iris. _You can jump around better than me. How useful._

Rolled. Dodged. More roamers poured through the walls. Birdarangs for the distant ones. It was an easy rhythm to settle into, to leap and twist so fast that the air felt like it was carrying him. Even Slade couldn't keep up with that dynamic. He slammed down his sticks on spines, the bony remnants of knees, eyes and gaping mouths and abdomens, ignoring the sounds. The pain. In his tiny corner of space, he fought, madly, wildly, with gritted precision. He was being confined, being cornered. Reduced to prey. His tongue was swollen and stuffy in his mouth, and he was back in his nightmares, crawling through the air vent, Slade's laughter echoing in the ventilation.

_I'm not going to make it._

Claws raked down his skin, and he could feel blood weakly dribbling down his arms. One cut, he could take. Multiple, he could endure. How many would it take to bring him down? He lashed out violently, the stick catching one across the neck. _If they're not mindless, then I'd be killing someone._

One of the roamers reared up before him and _sunk_ its teeth into his arm.

A cry of pain escaped Robin. The teeth dug in hard, dragging through flesh, and dimly he was aware that that hand dropped the stick. The clang of metal against stone felt like a gunshot. He struck at it with his free hand, struck at it, but its eyes bore into his and it _wouldn't let go_ \--

In desperation, Robin dropped the other stick, clawing into his belt. Cyborg. Cyborg's gadgets. Claws scraped at his legs and ankles. The other roamers were wary, as wary as something like them could be, but it would fade soon. A shark circling prey.

_Flashbang._

Robin dropped the marble.

Even behind closed eyelids, the light seared into his retinas. The mouth slackened from his arm, and he punched it, hard, feeling skin give away into decay. Foreign blood burst over his knuckles, cold and slimy. More gadgets. He couldn't afford to waste them, but _right now_ he had to escape, even as the walls surrounded him claustrophobically -- 

His fingers brushed over something sharp. Flat.

The cube.

Robin would have ignored it, would have dug deeper for another birdarang -- but the cube was _glowing._

Softly, mutedly, a faint thrumming blue, but it was pulsing.

In. Out. Robin's wound throbbed, and his head spun a little. He had lost more blood than he thought. He felt it now, clearer than before; cold wet ribbons trickling down his collar, his hands, his legs, staining his clothes. The bite on his arm stung in pain. He tried not to look at it.

_You'll need it._

Before his mind could make the decision, Robin closed his hand around the cube. It felt like plunging his hand into ice. He thought he could feel his heartbeat relocate to the cube, the slow, deliberate rhythm of living, breathing, air coming in and out of his lungs. He staggered, his feet unsteady. It was just a cube. Something for Slade to laugh at over his grave. Robin closed his eyes, wondering _why_ he had kept it. Why he still carried it around, even when it was nothing but a useless relic.

His fingers felt numb. 

When he withdrew his hand from the belt, what had been the cube followed his touch, feather-light. A blade of glass and silk. An edge sharper than obsidian.

His eyes barely comprehended what he held before him, a dark, stifling panic fuzzying up his mind. Compulsion made him lock on what laid in his hands.

A sword.

Its blade shone the same, glossy black the cube had been, streaks of silver lining the flat, but where its runners would be pulsed pale veins of blue. It didn't even felt like his arms moving. One of the roamers lunged, almost comedically in slow motion, and the sword reacted on its own. Cold blue flames trailed behind the cut.

When the roamer collapsed, it was barely recognizable as a mass of flesh and blood. 

A sword. A _sword._ Robin had never fought with one before, had only gone through its rudimentary training, but he wasn't guiding the sword anymore. The blade guided him. It made him lurch to his feet, spitting blood, slicing out wide, controlled swathes. His arms shook from the effort, but the pain was like background static; soft, buzzing, muted.

Sweat dripped acidly into his brows and eyes. The only sound was his own breathing, cold and hollow in his chest. His ribs ached sorely.

_Time to go._

He sliced through the walls, the blade cutting through solid stone as if it was hot wax. The flames rippled, _roared,_ the light filling the entire cavern. Hot, scorching blue, like the core of the hottest flame, yet cold to the touch. 

Another slice. Another slash. Simple, methodical, as if he was cutting bread. The stone didn't even crack or crumble -- it simply _melted_ away, like it had never been there at all. No weapon had ever felt so alive -- so _right_ \-- in his hands. It was effortless to rent the air in two, splitting molecules down to their very core, the fabric of reality meaningless. Stone melted, dissipated, like snow freshly fallen. One of the roamers let out a small cry, so similiar to a child sobbing that Robin almost collapsed right then and there. They were crowding around the body, something uncannily delicate in the way they ran their hands over the corpse, its skin still split from the blue light. The light was haunting; compelling. The blade shook like pure ice. Robin almost dropped his rucksack when he picked it up shakily, the fabric of straps rasping harshly down his forearms and wrists. In his state, each scrape blazed painfully down his skin.

The sunlight hit his face, all of a sudden; everywhere at once.

He didn't know how he could have lived without it.

The sword burned, and burned, and _burned,_ without any heat at all. There was a broken, utterly chaotic sound, like someone laughing maniacally, unable to stop -- and it took Robin a second to realize the sound came from his throat, raw and scraping, even as the sun filled him up. He was on a ledge. The ground. It didn't matter; he was under the sun, under the touch of light, and he was _out._

His knees shook, trembled, and he collapsed. The sword blurred into a smear. When he slumped to the ground in a daze, soaked in blood and sweat, it rested innocently as a cube in his open palm, the veneer as unassuming as always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> roamers are pretty much zombies, but they're not undead. Think of this unholy combination of 28 Days Later, the Silent Hill monsters, and a bit of the Grunge (the OG one). Maybe I am Legend? Probably. There's definitely more to them than what they seem.
> 
> anyways, I know the plot does feel kind of slow, so there's absolutely more characters coming in next chapter.
> 
> If you're enjoying it, please leave a comment!


	4. Chapter 4

_Someone cut the tether._

The realization came long after the sun had reached its zenith, as Robin sat on the roof of a building and gazed at the streets below. Even empty, the architecture still lent some semblance of human life, a solid indication that he wasn't utterly alone. He had rolled the piece of severed tether around in his hand for almost an hour.

It was frayed. If it had snapped under weight or tension, the breaks would have been clean. It was likely done with a serrated edge, so it must have been someone with access to knives. More importantly, someone who knew their way around knives.

Robin thought of the silhouette at the store, and shivered.

The sun shone wanely on his back. He dangled his legs over the edge, feeling an odd thrill at seeing his feet swing at least a hundred feet from the ground. Heights never scared him. The fall did.

Someone had cut the tether.

They had to have been following him for some time, he thought, pulling and relaxing the tether between his hands. The motion was relaxing, if minutely. They had followed him up to the caves, even when he had thoroughly checked for signs and trails. They had _reached_ him. At the very least, they could climb like he did, scaling a building like it was nothing. 

They could have killed him.

Death -- Robin couldn't say he feared it, not when he had seen the very sky bleed into red. But fear still drove him sometimes, fear of a faceless force that would take him away from the world, away from his friends and family and the warmth of the sun. A fear that it could seize him any moment, in a phase of vulnerability that was supposed to be his sanctuary. It was like being murdered in a temple.

_But they didn't._

If they had wanted him dead, they could have cut his throat while he slept. They could have properly cut the tethers to completely seal off the cavern route.

They wanted him alive. 

_You've been trained under the greatest detective alive. Think._

One: Robin himself. He pulled the tether tighter at that thought, trying not to pinpoint the restlessness growing in his stomach. Whoever -- or even multiple people -- was stalking him, they viewed him as a valuable asset. It morbidly made sense; he had a good deal of gadgets, and he was physically capable. He didn't know the full extent of his influence beyond Jump City or Gotahm, but he had found Batman's picture in the midst of the Gobi before. It wasn't far-fetched that they would know about him as well.

_Slade's laugh was almost warm. Almost. "Robin. So many of us would cut off their right hand for you to replace it."_

Robin gritted his teeth, the air feeling cold despite the time of the day.

Two: he possessed something of great value. That idea held less merit, since they could have just robbed it off his corpse, but maybe...it was only something he could access? The communicator? The belt? He threw that theory out, but it still rested in the back of his mind.

With a shaking hand, Robin withdrew the cube. In the daylight it looked almost normal, sitting squarely in his palm, a completely diametric contrast to the monster that had erupted from his hands mere hours ago. The blue flames had whirled, flared, like a condensed star dying, and he saw the roamers clustered around their fallen brethen. 

Mourning. Mourning over something sentient that he had slaughtered. His mind felt fuzzy.

_This thing can turn into a damn sword._

Had Slade known about it? He must have. Maybe he had used it before -- Robin didn't recall ever seeing Slade with a sword, but if there was anything he could count on the man, it was his general bastardy and his insane proficiency in weaponry. Nothing remotely positive could ever be said about Slade, but he could _fight,_ and fight well.

Robin swallowed, something tight in his stomach. It was the same tightness he had remembered seeing Starfire lift a car for the first time, like it weighed as much as a paperweight. He tore his attention back on the cube, its edge digging into his thumb and index fingers.

Maybe he could...

Robin inhaled deeply, trying not to gag on dust. Tried to tap the same emotion that had made him conjure the sword in the first place. Despair? Rage? Was it acceptance? He wasn't a stranger to magic weapons -- before he had left Gotham, Bruce had regaled him with tales of Katana's sword -- but he had never expected to use one. And in this world, a single weapon determined if he would live to see the next sunrise.

"C'mon," he muttered, rubbing at the vertices. "Change. Transform. Do _something._ "

The cube remained unchanged.

For half a second he was tempted to chuck it off the roof and let it shatter into thousands of shards on the avenue below. The memory of how he had received the cube made him pause. 

_You'll need it._

Slade had to have known. He _must_ have known what the cube was capable of. The weapon, no doubt, would have been more useful to him than to Robin. Robin knew gadgets, utilities, tools and inventions; Slade knew how to _kill_. That simple fact was something Robin had committed to his brain as he had laid awake at the Tower, staring up at the ceiling. Pictures of Slade all over his bedroom wall. Red ink slashed everywhere, like dripping blood.

_Murderer._

_There's a reason he gave it to me._ He knew sure as hell that it wasn't out of altruism, and the mere notion of that was laughable. It was a double-edged blade, much like Terra's suit, bonding him under Slade's control -- although he was unsure on exactly how a cube would manage that. A darker thought rose, one that made him slowly slip the cube back into his belt, dread crawling over his skin.

_He wants you to kill._

"I won't," Robin bit out.

Only empty air responded.

.

.

.

For the next few days he traveled, slept, woke, ate, and saw no sign of his stalker.

They were stealthy, he conceded, even as he ate granola mix from the branch of a dead poplar. Decaying bark crumbled under his legs. Climbing things had always been second nature, from trees to turrets, and the branches were no different, the leaves dead and brittle as they detached. A few roamers meandered along the streets. Sometimes they drove into crazed, mouth-spitting hostility, like the ones back at the caves, but the majority shuffled along in a pale imitation of sentience. _Ennui._ It couldn't exactly describe them, not with the ghoulish appearances and inhuman countenance, but it was the closest word Robin could pin to their listlessness.

He chewed on the oats, shifting a little on the branch. His fingers twitched. He wanted to _move._ To train. To spar and pick apart problems, not to hide in the half-shadows while the mountain loomed at its unreachable distance. He wanted contact, no matter how brief, to hear another voice besides his own.

Mentally, he cursed Isaac, if somewhat half-heartedly.

The sun trekked slowly across the sky. Robin chewed, ate, letting his body handle the food. He had a task to complete. He palmed his birdarang, the curve brushing lightly along his hand, the weight as familiar as breathing. The air wafted coolly around him in a light zephyr. He had to get used to this -- this _twilight,_ of shifting shadows and light. A liminality. A pang flared in his chest, but he squashed it down.

Slowly, he released the empty bag.

It drifted along the boulevard. This street had once been an intersection nearby a strip mall. It must have busted with life, from teenagers gathering excitedly around the cinema to seniors enjoying their morning stroll. All empty. Robin watched the bag drift, drawing closer to the shadows. It rested in front of a darkened storefront.

Robin perched absolutely still on his branch, not daring to even breathe.

Ten seconds passed agonizingly. Each one ticked by with the beat of a pendulum, slowly, surely, swinging to its doom. His legs burned from the strain, his feet digging hard into the bark. The bag remained where he was. Robin started to relax, letting his posture loosen --

A silhouette.

It was barely there, just moving behind the cracked windowpanes, and Robin thought it had been a trick of his imagination -- but no, it flickered again, muted and minute, but undeniably there. A silhouette of a human.

Not a statue, a mannequin -- of someone _moving._

Iciness pooled in his gut. Robin narrowed his eyes at the store -- it had been a general one, apparently -- watching. Waiting. He knew he couldn't be easily seen, not thirty feet up in the air and shadowed by dying foliage, but if the person thought to glance upward...

Robin tightened his grip on the birdarang. At this angle, he could hit the silhouette cleanly if they decided to come out into the open -- but it would also guarantee that they would know where he was hidden.

If it came down to a fight, he was certain he could win - or at least, had a chance of incaptitation - but then he remembered the tether, severed and frayed. The silhouette might have stood over him, serrated knife in hand, watching him sleep. Watching him breathe. Something easily cut off; terminated.

A message.

Robin flattened his mouth, and tried not to wince at the pain swelling from his hand at gripping the birdarang so tightly. The silhouette was still there, barely visible. Like they were looking for something as well.

_Breathe._

The silhouette turned away from the window. 

Robin didn't know how long he stayed in the tree. Nervousness pulled and twisted at his chest, and he could feel his heartbeat in his eardrums, a low, sonorous rhythm that made his head swim. He couldn't stay here forever. One instinct told him to run, to move away, to retreat back into the aeries and nests of rooftops and ledges. 

The other urged him to go down to the store. 

It wasn't much of a conundrum. Already Robin leapt, his footsteps muffled as he hit and rolled on the concrete. A lone roamer, childlike, crouched near the pavement. It stared up at him with tired brown eyes. 

Robin looked away, his throat tight.

The store, unlike the other convenience one, was completely bare. The shelves were vacant, only layers and layers of dust piling on each surface. The back half of the shop was in ruins, the walls crumbled in as if it had been broken down by an enormous punch. Cracks spread up to the ceiling. A bit of sunlight creeped into the room, but other than that it was completely dark.

The air was cooler -- no, _colder_ \-- like Robin had walked into a freezer. Gingerly, he ran his hand along the shelf, guiding himself along the aisle. Goosebumps broke under his skin. He fumbled in his belt for a flashlight, letting his fingers cover over the light to soften its glare.

Nothing. No one was here. Robin searched for shoeprints, for any sign of mud or dirt or other tracks.

It was only dust that hung suspended here, slowly falling to the earth.

A dead end.

He grimaced, the cold already numbing his fingertips. Outside the store the heat was a soft relief, like slowly slipping into bathwater, and Robin allowed himself a brief reprieve in the sunset. There was barely any light now. Gold flushed the edges of a violet expanse, creeping into ink. He glanced around, checking his surroundings -- the storefront, the walks, the trees. The roamer was still there, staring at him. It chewed on what looked like the remnants of a squirrel. 

He moved quickly down the street. 

For tonight, he decided to bunk at the second level of a restaurant. The tables were long overturned, glass and silverware and tablecloths scattered all over the floor, but the ledge where a huge oil portrait laid cracked still had enough space to reside in. Robin rolled out his bedroll, angling it so that the portrait obscured most of his body from the entrance. It wasn't as protected as the cave, but he wouldn't be so easily cut off from escape either. 

Still, sleep lingered at the edge, never quite reaching. The moonlight shone through the window. It covered the room in a silvery, ethereal haze, and it reminded Robin of the countless nights he had spent on the Tower's roof, watching the stars shift over the sea.

_Stop. Stop thinking about the past. It's useless._

Frustrated, he rummaged around his rucksack until he felt the leather of the tome rasp against his gloves. Raven's tome. He pulled it out slowly, keeping one eye on the window. He had only read it sparsely before, but each time was carefully bookmarked, the page slightly dog-eared from his use.

 _The Study of Planes._ Robin hadn't ever thought of Raven as a scholar -- or any of his teammates, really -- but it made the most sense. Trigon had came from another dimension, after all. He imagined her floating in her position, carefully combing through each page and word, surrounded by shadows and dusty tomes. Thinking of her, thinking of the Tower, made his chest ache.

He needed a distraction. He jumped from bookmark to bookmark, his attention slowly drifting.

... _the plane of_ _Gehenna is a nightmare awakened long after the souls of the mortals have moved on. For all its purposes it is a sentient plane, actively and maliciously feeding off the pain and torment of its wanderers. It secures its power from the embodiments of the damned._

_Still, even a place of despair has no excuse for being disorganized, and Gehenna is no exception. A hierarchy of nine provinces each have their respective princes, lords, and couriers for their dominion..._

... _the Abyssal Plane thrives on the shadow and uncertainty of dark magic. Here, its inhabitants immerse themselves deeply into the forbidden practices, corrupting on the soul and mind to make beauty out of horrors. To access this realm, one must descend far into the caves of the world, where only shadows reign..._

_...the Astral Plane moulds itself to the thoughts and consciousness of the mortal denizens below. Solely unique among the planes is its attachment to the soul; it is shaped by the liminality of mind and body, physicality and emotion, self and soul. It is the culmination of the connection to the world._

_What defines the Plane as something much more than the other Planes is its emptiness. It borders on all of the other planes, allowing it to be a doorway for deities and travelers alike to traverse the cosmos. The strong-willed stand on their feet here, while the depraved, the lost, the despondent drift eternally as revenants along its realm, unless they find their own strength of will or the belief of others. Here, power bows down to the thought..._

... _the Skylands_ _is the resting hall of the pantheons of deities and demigods. Each realm is polar to another -- shadow to light, malice to benevolence -- around the metaphysical Sphere of the World. Much like its counterpart in the underworld, the pantheons are dictated by a bureaucratic system of..._

Tiredly, Robin pushed the tome back into the rucksack, his eyelids sagging heavily. The name of the planes floated lazily in his head. 

_Astral..._

He hadn't heard of that word. Resolving to look it up in the tome tomorrow, Robin rolled over onto his back, staring in exhaustion at the ceiling and trying not to think further. Even at Isaac's place he had been lonely, the walls muffling any sign of human existence, and out on these streets he might as well been roving across a wasteland.

This time, sleep was almost a blessing. He drifted in and out of it, never truly becoming asleep or awake, straddling the border of consciousness. Dreams flitted like mirror shards. This time the cube was back into a sword, and he cut down someone into bloody strips, a terrible burning guilt threatening to devour him. Then he was caught in the gears again, the single grey eye tracking his movement, vivisecting him down to his bare bones. He was eight again, and his parents were leaping, jumping, _flying_ \--

 _This isn't -- this isn't right_ \--

Choking. Strangling. Something constricted his airways, a cold noose tightening around his throat. A faint, burning smell. The same heartbeat echoing in his head, his ears, his vision blurring and hot tears trickling down to his jaw, the same sensation he had when he had taken Slade's mask from the storage room --

_Poison._

Robin leapt up -- or tried to, but his legs failed to obey him properly. He half-rolled, half crumpled from the ledge, landing hard on the table below. Dizzily he staggered, saliva already clogging up the back of his throat.

He slung the rucksack on his back, his fingers trembling with cold ripples. Everything was _dark,_ like he was staring at a blackboard, and the moonlight hazed into an ambiguous smear of silver. It felt like a drum was beating directly in his skull.

When he drew his hand away from his mouth, blood clung thinly to his fingertips.

 _Air. I need fresh_ _air._ A pale green mist had filled the room. _Toxin gas._ He hadn't been to Gotham for a long time, but he knew the variants of Scarecrow's fear gas like the back of his hand. Trying not to breathe or swallow, spots dancing in his vision, Robin staggered out towards the door. _Another step. Another._ He focused his energy on his legs, keeping his breaths low and shallow. His heart protested desperately for oxygen. His lungs threatened to burst.

_I can't breathe._

He was almost there. He could feel the night air brushing his cheek, offering him some small sense of relief. The world pitched again, and Robin clenched his jaw, hands fastened on his rucksack straps. Almost there. Just a foot away. One more step, one more over the door threshold, and he could --

Only years and years of honed instincts saved him. Robin twisted back, and the crossbow bolt thudded into the door frame; when he glanced down, a scratch leered up from him on the front of his uniform. No blood. 

_Twang._ A soft, deadly sound. Robin lunged to the side, flattening himself to the wall for protection. The brief burst of energy made him shake from oxygen deprivation, but any more of the poison and he would fall unconscious. His hands shook hard enough for his teeth to rattle, but he withdrew his staff. In his other hand, he grasped a birdarang.

And waited.

 _One. Two. I can't hold my breath this long._ His eyes twitched from behind his mask.

_Six. Seven. Eight._

Stalemate.

_Nine._

The bolt fired into the window, the glass shattering in slow motion.

In an instant Robin flung the birdarang -- _the bolt came from up, west relative to front_ \-- and plunged into the outside.

Fresh air hit his lungs like a shovel. Someone shouted in pain, a muffled voice, and Robin leapt up, fumbling for his grapple gun. If he stayed still, the next bolt would hit him. Air rushed in his face as he swung onto the roof, scanning the darkened street. Only moonlight and trees rustled back --

_Twang._

Robin rolled, dodged, and felt the bolt part through his hair. His heart thudded loudly, even as his chest tried to expel the poison from his lungs. He couldn't fight like this, not when shadows and light blurred into streaks. 

There wasn't much of a choice.

Roof to roof. He swung, his arms aching, throwing another object -- it sailed through empty air. There was no sign that it hit anything, but Robin waited --

**_BANG._ **

The rooftop _flared_ in bright light, and a silhouette flinched back, still holding a crossbow --

Robin lunged at the figure, swiping hard at their legs with his staff. 

Instincts. Pure training, as the world swam around in his head. Staff met crossbow, splintering it -- then a set of long daggers, each blade carving up the air in hard fast streaks. By the set of shoulders and frame, it was a man, and a strong one at that -- one of his blows sent Robin stumbling, breathing hard.

"What do you want?" he snarled, his hands shaking on his staff. "Why did you try to kill me?"

The man only glanced at him. The moonlight slanted over his face -- and a pit opened in Robin's stomach as he processed what he was staring at. 

A _mask._ A glazed, burnt mask, etched deeply into the skin, rigid and static. Eyeholes borde into him. Other than that, he couldn't discern any feature of the man's face.

 _A mask..._ Robin swallowed, his tongue thick. For a moment he had thought -- he had thought it was --

An arrow struck through his left arm.

 _Pain_ \-- sharp, brutal -- flared up his arm, and the masker moved. The first blow he blocked, the second had the hilt hitting hard across his face. Robin stumbled back several feet, the pain and the poison clouding his senses.

 _Arrow. Graze. There's blood -- not a lot -- but_ \-- 

Another slash. Robin ducked, punched into the masker's stomach, hearing his knuckles crack. It was like punching solid steel. _There's another shooter._ He could hear it -- _thunk, thunk thunk_ \-- arrows landing all around them. the knives blurring and the heat in his head rising. Blood stained his arm, his hands already slippery. He would bleed out at this rate. An elbow struck the side of his head.

_I'm too slow. I can't keep up._

Robin dropped to his feet, snapping the staff into sticks, and struck _hard_ at the kneecaps.

For the first time the man let out a grunt of pain, lurching on his feet. Robin didn't hesitate. _Arrow on my left. The shooter's on my left. They're waiting for me to_ \--

He could almost _feel_ it, the arrow cutting through the air, right to where his neck would be. Robin jumped, as effortlessly as breathing, twisting over the man's head. Grabbed the shoulders. Wrenching his weight down. 

The arrow tore through the man's shoulder.

The impact almost made Robin black out, but he kept steady on his feet. He snapped the sticks back into the staff. Moved and swiped. The end slammed into the masker's stomach, knocking him down to his knees temporarily. Now his movements were slower, more sluggish, but he was still up and fighting.

 _A meta,_ Robin thought, horror festering in his gut. _Enhanced, at least. There's no way he could've remained standing._

Robin was -- he _knew_ he was good. You didn't fight against the scum of Jump City if you weren't. He had ran with superhumans, had trained under Bruce, had survived the apocalypse -- 

and yet here he was _losing._ Losing, in a way he shouldn't, with the poison fogging up his movements.

It had been a trap. Whoever his attackers were, they had been studying him. Waiting for him. Two of them. Maybe even more. The poison burned through his nerves. He needed to purge it. He needed to get up and fight. The man stalked closer to him, and Robin lashed out a foot, colliding with the stomach again.

No reaction. He must have been wearing armour.

_Fuck, I..._

He couldn't...

It was so hard to think, to concentrate, and his breaths were loud and harsh in the stillness. A semiconscious urge made him reach for the cube, to have it erupt into a sword. He couldn't focus. Something flitted at the edge of his vision. Another person. He couldn't even fight off one, not with another sniping away, and a third landing on the edge of the rooftop...

_Third?_

_That was --_

The silhouette. The one he had seen at the stores.

The masker finally said something, his voice low and harsh. "What -- "

The silhouette _moved._

Robin crumpled, pressing his fingers to his temples, trying to stay conscious. The silhouette's movements were -- precise. Fast. Similar to his own style. He _knew_ that style. He knew only a handful of people who fought like that.

 _It can't_ _be_.

Knives flashed, and the silhouette withdrew a --

_A katana._

In close quarters, there was no match at all. Robin could only stare, his mind blank, as the silhouette slashed once, twice, the sort of blow that was almost unreal in how deadly it was. It slashed a fourth time, sinking deep into the masker's gut. Down to the hilt.

_Twang._

The silhouette twisted, ever so slightly, and the bolt thudded into the rooftop.

 _The shooter. They're still there._ Whoever his saviour was, he couldn't leave them alone.

Robin stood, wobbled, his throat burning with acid. His palms were sweaty under his gloves. He couldn't stand long -- already his eyelids sagged, and the pounding in his head intensified. _I've got seconds._

_Then run._

And he did.

He plunged himself into his instincts. The timer winded, down and down, the plane of the world tilting down with him, but he _ran._ He sailed over the gap between the buildings, suspended in the air, and he saw the shooter -- another masker, female, reloading the crossbow quickly. She glanced up, the mask expressionless.

Robin barely felt awake. 

One punch. Two. She was wearing armour as well, but nothing blocked a surprise attack straight to the face. Robin raised his staff, brought it down, the crossbow cracking into pieces. The masker snarled, leaping to her feet.

Robin ducked, and swung straight into her sternum.

Off the roof.

If she was meta -- likely, considering she hadn't even flinched from his attacks -- she would survive. He heard something land solidly, far on the ground. She would live. Robin breathed, feeling sick to the gut, adrenaline and toxin making him sink onto the roof. Footsteps made him raise his head slowly.

It was the silhouette. The sword they held was drenched in blood, red streaks trailing behind on the ground, and Robin didn't have to look at the other roof to know the male masker was dead.

"...thanks," Robin managed, feeling like a truck had ran over his ribs. "I...I don't know who you are, but thanks for helping me out -- "

His voice died in his throat.

His gaze moved up slowly, from boot to armoured legs, torso, broad shoulders, a frame he had memorized into his every nerve. The brief rush of gratitude was smothered in a numbing terror, like he had been caught in frozen water. 

And when his eyes finally rested on the face, even as he slipped into unconsciousness, it felt like a solid, violent kick to the gut. He was in a different place, a different world, in a universe that barely made a modicum of sense to him anymore, but he would recognize the copper-and-black tones of Slade's mask from anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Player 2!
> 
> If you're enjoying the story, please feel free to leave a comment! I'd love to know what you enjoyed or what I can improve on, or any other thoughts.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple a' warning tags in the end notes.
> 
> I'm kinda surprised at myself at how quickly i managed to get this ch. out...don't think it'll be a regular occurence, tho

Consciousness returned slowly, like a faucet dripping water.

Mentally, Robin allowed himself twenty seconds before he moved from the cot. The blankets were ragged, especially at the fringes, but they were thick enough that he couldn't complain about the cold. Underneath, he only wore a tank top and boxers.

The bathroom tiles were freezing under his bare feet. Robin allowed himself a yawn, trying not to notice how shit he looked in the mirror. His face was thinner, his hair stringier, and shadows underscored his eyes. The water spurt out in icy bursts over his hands, making him yelp. There must have been a cold front outside recently.

He showered quickly and methodically, the water barely tepid enough for comfort. _Sparse._ At first Robin had thought only he had to suffer such stringent measures, but everything about the lair was sparse. No decorations, no sign of personal life -- it might as well have been a monk's cell, or a prison room. He scrubbed at his skin, letting the remnants of yesterday's sweat and blood swirl down the drain.

Slade didn't exactly have a variety of clothes. The few he had given Robin were as unassuming and monochrome as possible, but they were still leagues better than the uniform. At least none of the rest were branded with the S. Robin dressed quietly, all too aware of the camera attached at the corner, tracking his every move.

The halls were empty. The boots were heavier than what Robin had previously wore, laced with steel on each sole, but he moved quietly enough that his footsteps were muted on the ground. Cold, dusty air swirled around. He shivered a little, wishing he had worn an extra layer.

The kitchenette was empty. Half of the time he could expect Slade to be leaning at the counter, simply waiting for him to wake; this morning, however, even the counters and cupboards were bare of food. Vaguely, Robin wondered what Slade ate. He had never seen the man eating, although logically he knew Slade must have at least once in a day. 

One of the drawers yielded on a smushed granola bar. It was expired, but Robin still chewed on it, wincing at how stale the oats were. Slade was likely out today. The doors might even be unbolted. It made no difference -- if he tried to escape, or to warn the Titans, then Slade would press the button. It didn't matter that he had explored the rooms -- the unlocked ones, at least -- every inch of the corridors, even the main chamber. The one where Slade had pummelled him into the ground, where the screens of his friends' bloodstreams displayed, painting the walls a pale red.

 _Day 12._ It was scary on how easily he settled into a routine. Sometimes it felt like Slade had forgotten he existed at all, and it _did_ make Robin relieved -- he could forage his own food and water, retreat into the partial safety of his room -- but a smaller part of him longed for another voice. It longed for his friends.

_Day 12._

Did the Titans know where he was? Slade had crushed the communicator in front of his face, cruelly dropping the pieces before him. Could Cyborg still have traced the signal? Could Raven sense him through her powers, delving into the shadows to capture the rhythm of his heart?

Robin gnashed his teeth harder on the granola. He hadn't really liked it before, but now the taste grounded him. It reminded him of home. 

_Keep your mind strong._ It didn't matter how broken his body might become. If his mind broke before his body did, it would be over.

_Twelve days. It's only been twelve days._

He finished the bar and threw the wrapper into a small wastebin. The water from the kitchenette's faucet was marginally warmer than the bathroom's, but its iciness still seared down his throat. He drank two glassfuls. With how dry the air was becoming -- winter must be nearing, even if the city's proximity to the bay meant no snow -- he needed to stay hydrated. More food would be better as well. The leftmost cupboard only yielded another granola bar.

Robin stashed it in his pocket, his stomach growling in protest.

Six days. Six days without a mission. The first one, thankfully, had been harmless enough -- steal a piece of jewelry from the store, although to what use it was to Slade he had absolutely no idea -- but Robin knew what Slade wanted from him. Every punch, every kick, every barbed word projected the man's intentions as clearly as a radio speaker.

 _You're going to learn to kill, Robin,_ Slade had said softly that first day, like always, his mouth near his ear. _You'll learn to like it._

Today was not the day, apparently.

There were only a handful of rooms Robin was allowed to access. The main chamber, which he did his best to avoid. A few storage rooms, mostly filled with scrap metal. His own room. The training room -- and there he headed, dread building in his gut. If Slade wasn't at the kitchenette, then he would be expecting Robin to be there instead. 

The training room was too similar to the one back at Bruce's manor -- the same spaciness, the high ceiling, the array of weapons along the wall. Unlike the manor's, however, it wasn't just staffs or sticks or plastic weapons -- when Robin touched the nearest sword, he flinched at the feeling of _metal._ There were a lot of swords. Scimitars, wakizashis, jians, broadswords, others -- and katanas. Plenty of katanas.

 _I could run up to him,_ Robin thought. _I could run the sword through his skull, and then I could escape._

His hand trembled over the hilt of one.

_And I'd achieve what he wanted._

Disgust churned in his throat. Robin turned, settling on a wooden staff instead. Safe. Familiar. He made a few practise runs, kicking and swinging, wondering how long he was supposed to wait for Slade. Slade hadn't exactly given him a schedule either, just a vague set of instructions overlaid with the promises of a threat. There wasn't exactly a straw dummy he could work on. He swung in frustration at empty air, wishing each blow landed on Slade instead.

_You have to get better._

He might as well utilise it.

He rolled on the mats, practicing his jumps and leaps. Those were his greatest assets, and maybe the one advantage he had over other fighters -- he could _jump_ , bend, stretch and contort to almost absurd degrees. He never forgot his acrobat training, relying on his environment for speed and strength. Handstands, leg crosses. He pinned the staff on the ground and tested using it as a pole he could swing around. Sweat burned in his eyes.

He collapsed promptly.

Half an hour later, Slade still hadn't shown up. Robin bit his lip, nervousness flickering in his stomach. To his knowledge, Slade hadn't missed a training session -- preferring to relish every chance to beat Robin into the ground -- and the disruption to the status quo was unsettling. Training wasn't something easily skipped. For the past few days Slade had been making him train with real swords, his muscles sore from memorizing the pattern of swings and slashes, his hands calloused from gripping the hilts so tightly. Robin put up the staff, listening to it clink against the solid steel of blades.

He crept out.

The halls were still empty, but the main chamber...it took a moment to realize it was just Slade there, sitting at a computer, holding --

_A phone?_

And he was _speaking._ Not a soft layered threat, not some command to humiliate Robin further, but an actual dialogue. An actual conversation. He had never heard Slade's voice sound so --

_Angry? Tense?_

" -- not a protocol," Slade was snapping, his tone a far cry from his usual monotone. It felt like the crackling of a frozen lake, his voice pitching from fury to deadly calm. "It's my _own_ set of rules. I'm not subject to yours."

There was a pause. Robin stood frozen at the threshold, hoping against hope that Slade hadn't noticed him.

"You wanted to _kill_ her at first. Now you're pulling the 'doting mother' card for custody -- " Slade's hand tensed, and the phone bent slightly under his grip. "I wouldn't know. Your precious little government soldiers wouldn't allow me to even go _see_ her."

Whoever was on the other end must have shouted, because Robin heard a crackle of static from the speaker.

" _I'm_ the danger?" Slade's laugh sent chills down Robin's spine. "Is that what you tell her? You're unbelievable."

He slammed the phone down on the table, and it was a surprise that neither object cracked. He was swivelling back to the screen, typing something away at the keyboard. Besides him, the screens of the Titans' lives pulsed, dimmed, the blood continuing to flow. Robin crept closer as he could, hiding behind one of the gears. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the screen that Slade had pulled up.

It was a picture of a woman. Late-thirties, maybe early-forties, with brown hair cut down to her jawline. Streaks of grey hair caressed her forehead. The smile she gave to the camera was tight, like she was clenching her teeth, with faint wrinkles bracketing her eyes and mouth.

Slade raised his fist, as if to punch the screen.

He lowered the trembling hand.

Robin blinked.

_What...?_

Slade sat at his seat for several tense seconds, before switching off the screen.

It was the only warning Robin got before a knife flew at his head, embedding into the wall mere centimetres from his ear. He lurched backward, back into the hallway -- and Slade leapt at him, descending from the gears in a monstrous blur, the fist connecting to his jaw _hard._

"Robin."

It was his usual tone, cold and calm, but an anger burned at the clip of his syllables. Robin dodged another blow, panic closing his throat. The fight could only end one way -- he was wearing quotidian clothes, and Slade was fully armoured. Slade grabbed his right shoulder and _twisted,_ wrenching him down with so much force that when Robin crashed onto his back, he swore his spine had shattered from the impact. 

Before he could get up, Slade planted one steel boot on his chest, pushing hard down on his sternum. Robin choked, struggling to breathe.

"Enjoyed the conversation?"

How long had he noticed Robin standing there? Robin snarled, trying to pry the boot off of his chest reflexively. His heart beat faster.

"If you didn't want me to hear it, maybe you shouldn't have talked so loudly."

" _My_ fault, isn't it?" Slade leaned a bit more forward, cruelly pressing weight until Robin whimpered from the pain. Any more and bones would start cracking. "If I pricked your eardrums, then you wouldn't be able to hear at all."

Robin didn't know what madness had seized him -- maybe it was fear, humiliation, or pure, painful anger. "Then you wasted all this just to get your _apprentice._ "

Slowly, the boot withdrew from his chest.

Robin only had a moment to breathe before it connected with his ribs.

"Get up."

Another kick. This one Robin barely avoided, rolling and feeling steel graze his sides.

"I said _get up._ "

Robin staggered to a column for support, bracing for another punch. Strangely, Slade didn't deliver, still staring at him coldly.

"What?" he spat, too tired and hungry and _pissed_ to care. Danger screamed from the back of his head. "Don't want me to know that not everyone kisses your feet? That you can't control _everyone_?"

"Robin," Slade warned.

"Who was that?" His tongue felt thick, swollen, running on autopilot. "Old friend? Older enemy?" The words _doting mother, custody_ floated up to his mind, having been spoken with dripping venom. 

No way.

No fucking way.

Robin could _feel_ his eyes widening, his bravado swamped with a world-shaking revelation. Whoever Slade had spoken to, that was his --

This time Slade struck him hard across the face, the sort of blow that made the body crumple like a puppet. Robin slumped onto his legs, blood already dripping from his nose. Before he could cup his face, gloved fingers grabbed his hair and wrenched his head up until his neck strained.

Slade's stare burned through him.

"The next time you overstep your boundaries," he hissed, his voice harsh and low, "I will kill the Tamaranean first. I _swear_ on it, Robin."

He let go of Robin's hair, and Robin could only helplessly stare after him as the man stalked away. 

.

.

.

Consciousness slammed into him, like an armoured boot to the face.

It must have looked comedical. For a terrifying, frantic moment, all Robin knew was a gaping darkness that choked him, constricted him, wrapping nooses and nooses around his throat. He wheezed, trying to draw in breath, his lungs burning against his ribcage. A ripple of pain flared from his left arm.

He woke suddenly, violently, the sunlight blinding.

 _Bruce would be disappointed._ Robin breathed in, breathed out, trying to relax his heartbeat. _Five senses. Raise your situational awareness._ Clarity of mind returned slowly and fuzzily.

He had been lying down in a mess of ratty sheets. He sat up, wincing at his back creaking, and saw that his rucksack was placed in the corner of the room.

Robin blinked, letting his senses filter back into his nerves. He was in what looked like an empty hospital room, save for a set of cabinets. It was plain, unadorned, with the window at the far side. From here he could see the sun rising. The air was still cool, which meant it was still early in the dawn. Despite the coolness, sweat clung onto his neck and skin. Clammy all over. The air smelled odourless, nothing like the faint burning the toxin gas had carried, nothing like the dead, cold rot he had grown accustomed to. There were no sounds.

_Where..._

Poison. Masks. Knives, crossbows -- and his shoulder ached again, as if every muscle had been torn to strands -- although it wasn't bleeding anymore. It had been tightly bandaged.

_Who --_

The silhouette. The katana. Their mask -- _Slade's_ mask --

Robin's stomach dropped. 

_No. No, no, this can't be happening._

It couldn't be happening. It was just another nightmare, nightmares on top of shitty nightmares. He had already been through so much. The universe couldn't be this vindicative. There was no way that had been --

The door opened.

"No," Robin croaked on reflex, his body frozen, refusing to move. Unable to move. Ice flooded into his veins. He stared up in horror at --

_I can't believe this._

"No to water?"

"This isn't happening," Robin whispered.

But it was. No amount of wish-fulfillment, or rubbing at his eyes, could wipe away the fact that _Slade_ stood at the doorway, holding two bottles of water. Slade, who stood there like any other person, not someone that had tormented his dreams and beat him into the _fucking ground_ , smearing his blood all over the floor. 

_Oh my god._

"Your loss." Slade placed the bottles on the ground and opened the cabinet, pulling out a mess of bandages and wraps. He walked over to where Robin sat, and touched his left arm. 

Common sense finally clicked in Robin's brain. In half a heartbeat he jumped to his feet, and regretted it immediately -- blood rushed from his head, and his balance teetered. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself. His mouth burned, like acid had been poured all over his tongue.

"Don't _touch_ me."

Slade spread his hands in a mockery of a supplicant gesture. "By all means, Robin. Surely your arm will heal up on its own."

Robin glanced dumbly down at his bandaged arm, his brain refusing to process its implication. 

" _You_ bandaged it?"

"You certainly didn't do it yourself."

 _Control yourself. Control your fear._ Disbelief and terror made Robin want to vomit. If it came down to a fight, there was no question on winning, or even enduring; in such close proximity, with him still sick and dizzy from last night, Robin would get every single one of his bones broken. He sucked in a breath, letting oxygen ground him. Breathe in. Breathe out. He counted to ten; each slow, steadying breaths.

All the while, Slade stood there, arms folded.

"Are you done throwing a tantrum?"

"It was you last night." Robin forced out the words from his dry throat. "You were on the roof."

"The mask didn't give me away?"

"Why..." The room spun, just a little. "...why were you there? Why were you following me?"

Slade didn't respond immediately. With what looked like strained patience, he unrolled a strip of bandage, the fabric slightly yellowed from age. Robin watched him, heart beating in his throat. _Run. Fight._ He wouldn't get far with either. He inched towards the door, his fingers scrabbling along the cold planes of the wall.

"You won't get far," Slade said calmly, the same cold calmness that had always defined him. Stoic. Implacable. Robin's mouth went as dry as sandpaper. "Your shoulder will bleed out within the day."

"Screw you," Robin snapped. "I'm _fine._ I've been on my own just fine all this time." But even as the words left his mouth, he knew they weren't true.

Slade's eye thinned, and Robin guessed he was smiling under the mask -- the sort of smile that resembled a snarl more, twisting lip over teeth. "Last night showed that clearly, didn't it? You'll be incapacitated in a fight. You can't guarantee that none of those masked people will attack you again."

Robin hesitated.

"Beaten down, poisoned..." Slade mused, even having the gall to tilt his head to the side. "I'd thought you would fight better, Robin. Or did none of our time together teach you anything?"

Robin remembered the knives striking hard at his staff, the arrow slicing across his skin. The poison that clouded his mind. How his limbs felt useless, weak, even as he tried to fight, his mind succumbing into fragmented, senseless pieces.

_I would've died on the roof if Slade hadn't come._

Maybe that was the source of his anger, and shame -- that _Slade,_ of all the people possible, had saved him. For what reason Robin couldn't discern, but it made him tighten his jaw so hard that sparks of pain raced down his neck. His fingers closed around the doorknob.

He could leave. He could run.

And they would come after him again.

_Better the devil you know._

"...so your grand solution is," Robin began slowly, anger simmering in his stomach, "to stick together. With _you._ "

Slade's posture didn't change, but Robin could practically _feel_ the smugness radiating off of him in thick waves. "Why are you acting so surprised? We've worked together before."

" _Worked?_ Try _forced to._ "

"No one forced you to come to my old base."

And that was the root of the problem, Robin thought, his fingers still gripping the doorknob like it was a lifeline. He had sought Slade out, one fateful night, the sky above starless and utterly devoid of light. He had no excuse for it, either -- he hadn't gone there to fight, or to capture, or to even stop him. Just to talk. Just to listen.

"That's..." The sun lit up the room, throwing their shadows across the floor. In the distance, Robin spotted the hazy silhouette of the peak. "That's different. I wasn't..."

Slade waited.

"It's different," Robin concluded, wincing at how lame that sounded. 

Slade shrugged again, the strip of bandage flitting between his fingers. "If you say so."

The silence hung between them. All of Robin's instincts urged him to leave, to snatch up his rucksack and flee back into the city. Back into the maze of cold, dead streets, only wind and roamers and sky for company, where human voice was a thing of his dreams. Back to sleeping at the edge of consciousness, never sure if the next sound could be a footstep, a sigh, a knife slipping out from its sheath. Back to seeing the sun rise, fall, the communicator lifeless in his hands, never knowing if he would live to see the next day.

 _Versus_...Robin stared at Slade, really stared at him, in his full armour and gear. A man who had held him down as the gears pounded and turned, making him watch his friends writhe in torturous pain. A man who had heralded the world's end, leaving bodies and broken minds behind. The same man who had sat on those same gears, giving him something that had saved his life.

 _A deal with a_ _devil._ This must have been what Terra had felt; to be granted some measure of safety, of control, in return for a mutual alliance. An alliance that had ended with her petrified in stone.

"What," Robin managed through gritted teeth -- it was a tic he found himself doing frequently, recently -- "What do you want?"

Slade rolled his eye. "Sit down."

.

.

.

It wasn't the first time Slade had dressed up his wounds.

Robin had counted. Sixteen robberies -- _sixteen robberies_ \-- from an empty warehouse to the high lines of a skyscraper. Four out of those sixteen, he had limped back to Slade's base trailing blood and split skin. Four out of sixteen times, Slade had grabbed him none too gently and wrenched him into onto an unused cot. His fingers had stitched up the wounds with a quick, neat efficiency that would've been fascinating to watch, had Robin been given any actual anaesthetic. 

Which would have also been helpful right now, judging by how his arm _burne_ _d_ as Slade swabbed some sort of antiseptic over the wound. Robin choked back his scream, tears of pain gathering in his eyes. Dimly through the haze he saw Slade reaching for the gauze, applying it, feeling some of the blood leak out from under the fabric.

"Hold _still,"_ Slade snapped as Robin reflexively tried to yank his arm away. Slade's gloved hand shot out, clamping around Robin's wrist. The leather rasped against his skin. "Stop thrashing around."

As much as he hated to admit it, Robin was glad that Slade had said something; it made him direct his pain into anger instead. "Maybe if you considered giving me some _anaesthetic,_ you sadist."

"The hospital doesn't have any." Slade finished wrapping the last of the bandages, pulling the strip tightly enough that another type of pain flickered through Robin's arm. "And you can't afford losing your concentration." The moment Slade's hand left his skin, Robin snatched his arm away, face burning from embarrassment and pain.

"Or maybe you didn't bother searching for some."

"That," Slade conceded quietly, "is also true."

A strange, staticky stillness settled.

If someone had asked Robin years ago what he had envisioned in the future, the answer -- sitting with Slade in the middle of a soulless world -- would have made him snort in disbelief. Yet somehow, here he was, being bandaged up by a man who had repeatedly put wounds on him in the past. If it was anyone else patching him up, Robin would have thanked them, but now he could only scowl at Slade's back.

Slade tossed one of the bottles of water at him. "Drink."

Robin looked at the bottle suspiciously.

"If I wanted to harm you, Robin," Slade said, slowly and quietly, like he was explaining something simple to a child, "then I would have just left you there on the roof."

Gut instinct told Robin that things that weren't that simple, that straightforward, but he couldn't muster up the energy to snap back a retort. Instead, he uncapped the bottle with trembling fingers, swallowing a small mouthful. The water tasted normal, with no hint of chemicals.

He took another sip, and then another. Let the water flow down his throat, refreshing him. Clearing his head. It kept the throbbing in his skull at a tolerable limit, easing it into a faint buzz. The water was lukewarm, to put it generously, but it hydrated him enough. Another swallow. He drank as slowly as possible, gathering his thoughts.

"What do you want out of this?"

Somehow Slade had positioned himself in his blind spot. Robin tried not to show how much that little observation unnerved him. He took another sip, resolutely staring out of the window. 

"Out of what?"

Was he really going to make him say it? "This -- this _partnership_." The word sounded wrong. It sounded like Robin had _wanted_ to work alongside him, like he hadn't been forced to in order to survive. 

He could almost _see_ Slade smiling, the smug bastard. "Would you believe me if I said it was out of altruism?"

Robin snorted despite himself. "No."

"Fair." Robin tensed at the sound of footsteps, but it was only Slade resting a hand on his shoulder, lightly making him turn his head. When Slade next spoke, the voice was low and _right there_ in his ear, and Robin squirmed in discomfort.

"Look outside."

"I _am_ \-- " His voice caught in his throat as Slade's hand crept to the back of his neck. Robin swallowed, blood rushing up his face. _Why did I let him get so close?_ He wanted to slap the hand away, but his body betrayed him, leaning slightly into the touch.

It had been so long that anyone had touched him so closely for a prolonged period of time, and it sent his nerves flaring, heat trickling down to his collarbone.

"Do you see it?"

It was getting difficult to breathe. Robin couldn't blame Slade either, not when the man's grip was light on his nape. He could feel Slade's thumb lightly pressing into the spine. 

"See what?"

Slade released him, and it made Robin ashamed at the small, unconscious urge to keep the hand there. "The mountain."

It probably wasn't humanly possible to be more ambiguous. " _Why?_ What's on the mountain?" 

Slade laughed softly. "And you said you were doing fine."

Robin clenched his fists in his lap, hating how _condescending_ Slade's voice had dropped into. He stood shakily, biting his lip as the pain in his left arm flared again. It was a miracle that the arrow hadn't been poisoned.

Slade's voice sharpened, if only marginally. "What do you know about this world?"

 _That it's bizarre, and I'm lonely, and I want to find my friends._ Robin fished around for words, all too aware of Slade's single eye now resting on him. 

"...my communicator won't function." He glared at Slade. "I bet that makes you happy, doesn't it?"

Slade ignored the comment. "What did you expect? We're not even on _Earth_ anymore, Robin. Geography, signals, the passage of time -- remove these concepts from your head. They hold no meaning."

Robin stared up at Slade.

"That's...that's not true."

The faintest hint of irritation seeped into Slade's voice. "Why don't you tell me where we are, then?"

Robin opened his mouth, answer ready on the tip of his tongue -- and then promptly closed it.

He couldn't answer.

Slade scoffed softly. "And here I thought you were the knowledgeable one."

This time Robin couldn't stop from lashing out -- "maybe I was too busy _surviving_ to consider it, or did that not occur to you?"

"It did." Slade leaned against the wall. "How much have you heard of the Astral Plane?"

Robin froze.

The text from Raven's tome swam into his memory, highlighted by moonlight --

 _Solely unique among the planes is its attachment to the soul; it is shaped by the liminality of mind and body, physicality and emotion, self and soul._ _What defines the Plane as something much more than the other Planes is its emptiness..._

"...no," he said, not wanting Slade to know how much he knew. Had Slade searched his rucksack? He didn't dare to check. "No, I haven't."

Slade tilted his head.

"I see." He clearly did, judging by how amused his tone went, and Robin scowled back at him. "I can't say I have all the details on it either, but...I've heard things about it. That it's a place of thought, more than concrete. That it's shaped by our minds."

Robin waited.

"But there was something useful I learned in Hell." Robin thought of the skeletal face, and shivered. "Every plane has a focal point, of sorts. To destroy it is to restore the world."

"What?"

Slade sighed. "Trigon's domain, Robin. Trigon himself. How did Raven restore the world?"

"...she killed him."

"She destroyed the focal point." Slade turned to look at Robin, the eye hard and assessing. Robin felt like he was being scanned by an X-ray. "Every plane has one. Some deity, some location, that fuels its power. The plane here is no different."

Against his better sense, Robin joined Slade at the window. It was hard to ignore the other man's presence, large and sinister, even in the full beam of daylight, but he tried his best not to show his nervousness. Instead, he stared out of the glass.

The mountain loomed, close and unreachable.

"I am going to the peak, Robin." In a rare moment Slade's voice was dead serious, without a single drop of humour or malice. "And if you ever want to see your friends again, you'll be coming with me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Physical abuse, not-really-stockholm-syndrome-but-almost-in-the-same-vein.
> 
> Also, this chapter is like twice the length it's supposed to be b/c i dumped a ton of exposition here
> 
> And thus is the beginning of a lovely and beautiful relationship!!! Irony aside, I know that this ship in fics can get very...unhealthy...as some major understatement of the century, so i'd like to pitch out that in this story it would be on the lighter side of grey (still unhealthy and manipulative, obviously, but less of a nonstop pain train)
> 
> As usual, please leave a comment if you want! Comments are like the only way I know how the story's going, and you're always welcome to pitch in any ideas/preferences -- my draft for this fic is complete, but I'm more than happy to worm in some suggestions.


	6. Chapter 6

_This is a horrible idea._

By the second hour, Robin had repeated that phrase enough times in his head to permanently brand it into his brain. Maybe he could tattoo it in his skin somewhere, just to remind him of one of the most stupid decisions a person could possibly make in a lifetime. Above him, Slade scaled what had been a fire escape, the metal twisted and rusting in the open air. Robin did his best to keep up with him, rucksack bouncing uncomfortably on his back.

"Wait," he heaved, his body still reeling from the effects of the poison. "I can't keep up."

Slade glanced down at him, climbing halfway across a set of rails. "And when your masked attackers ambush you again, you'll kindly ask them to pause for your health."

 _Asshole._ Robin assessed the strength of the rails. They were considerably fragile, not enough to support the tension of the grapple gun. He began climbing, Slade a speck of shadow above him.

Slade had insisted on travelling by the shadows. "Daylight makes you a target," he had snapped when Robin had asked, "and nighttime is too dangerous, but we can't remain stranded here for several hours." He had snuck along the alleyways and backways, sticking under the cover of canopies and awnings, slinking through a set of empty flats. Robin had trailed after him, unwilling to admit that the shadows lent him some small sense of comfort, even if they were dark and musty. He didn't know why he followed. He knew how to bandage his own wounds, and he could just leave --

_And be alone again._

Not for the first time, Robin's chest ached for his friends. He wondered if he would ever forget their voices.

"Robin," Slade warned.

He continued climbing. The metal dug into his gloves -- the gloves Starfire had given him, somehow miraculously not stained in ten types of grime or fluid -- and he hauled himself up, his left arm shaking. He had learned how to climb with one arm, but the effort was exhausting. The sun raced stripes down the avenue. He climbed higher, his head light from the thinness of the air.

Slade waited for him on the rooftop. It was partially covered with a concrete lot, a vaulted arch hanging over the remnants of a car. The smell of rot lessened here, replaced with burnt rubber and gasoline. Apart from the remnants, the area was empty. Robin wheezed a little, rolling his arms to ease out the soreness from his muscles. He set the rucksack onto the ground, stretching his shoulders.

"Tired already?"

Robin bit back his words. "Why did we come up here?"

"Vantage." Slade pointed at the far side of the avenue, where the buildings sloped down to the bay. The mountain lurked in the distance, the peak today fogged up by red-rimmed clouds. "The summit is visible to you, yes?"

"Yeah."

Slade made a humming noise. "How would you propose we get there?"

 _Don't you have all the solutions?_ "It's across the bay," Robin said, if in more irritation than he had intended. "I've tried getting there, but I can't get closer. I don't know why."

"That's because you're unable to."

This time Robin didn't bother to hide his surprise. His expression must have been short of hilarious, since Slade laughed softly; the same soft laugh he made when he knocked Robin to the ground. 

"That." _doesn't make any sense_ remained on his tongue. _Of course_ it wouldn't make any sense. Nothing did, really, no constant or fixture or anything that grounded him to a world long ago. 

Slade leaned against the scraps of the car, undeterred by the shards of broken glass. "I told you earlier this morning, Robin -- geography. It has no laws or rules here. Throw it out of your mind."

Now he voiced his words. "That -- that's not possible." Robin gestured to the lot they stood on. "Are you saying we're not able to travel or use coordinates, or _anything_?"

"I didn't say that."

Robin rolled his eyes. "No, you're just chucking out the words without -- "

"You can't reach the mountain just by foot." Slade's voice became flat, just for a second, and Robin instinctively shrank back. He didn't know why he had been relaxed before. Slade hadn't touched Jump City ever since Trigon was defeated, but that didn't mean he was any _less_ of a sociopath. Even now, in a relaxed pose, Robin had the feeling that Slade was prying apart his flaws, his weaknesses, more than ever, waiting for a moment to pounce.

_Tired, poisoned, restless --_

Robin resisted the urge to tug his cape over his body. "What are you trying to say?"

"I told you this was a place of thought."

The katana leapt into Slade's hand, the movement so fast that all Robin caught was silver blurring in the air. He had the span of a breath to lunge back, the sun glimmering from the length of the blade as it cut through the space where he had just been standing. 

"You -- " _Betrayal?_ _Already?_ "I thought we had a _deal._ "

"We still do." Slade's next swing swiped at his knees, forcing Robin to jump. He somersaulted backward, his shoes scoring the concrete as he whipped out his staff. Rage poured into his muscles, making his fingers shake. "Think of it as training."

"You just tried to _kill_ me!"

"Incorrect." Slade swung his sword down in a brutul overhead cut, metal hitting metal. The sound pierced through the stillness. "As I said, I'm _training_ you."

Robin dodged one slash, another -- there was some truth in Slade's words, apparently. So far none of the slashes had been particularly lethal, and they were stable enough in momentum that he could avoid them. Still, the absolute gall made Robin grit his teeth, head buzzing with fury. 

_"_ Like what, your _apprentice_ training?"

"Nothing so grueling, Robin." It occurred to Robin that he had never seen Slade use this specific katana before. It was the same one that he had cut the masked man to pieces with; there was something about the lightness of the blade, its sharpness, that made his nerves light up. Robin swung out the slightly heavier end of his staff, counting on the weight to accelerate his kick into Slade's stomach. The sound of his boot solidly striking armour was more satisfying than it should be.

Robin had gotten _better._ He knew he had. Once, he had trouble catching himself by his swings, tracking the opponent's movements -- now it was clearer, sharper, a calm sort of confidence that made him parry Slade's moves. Pure skill and strength guided the other man's blows, attacking with a cold precision that set his teeth on edge, but Robin caught them better. It was no longer the crushing, drowning terror during his apprentice days, where each fight felt like swimming against the current of a river.

"You've improved, Robin." Slade almost sounded _approving,_ or as close to the tone as he could get. "I'm impressed."

Then he _moved_ \-- Robin saw the attack, saw the blade turn and shift sideways and then _tear_ through the air, but his body was too slow to react to it. The flat struck him hard across the chest, knocking him off his feet. 

"But not enough."

Robin grimaced, cupping his chest. There would be a bruise there by tomorrow morning, another injury adding to the canvas of wounds and scars on his skin. "Is this going to be part of training? Just kicking me down each chance you get?"

"Don't be obtuse." Slade held out a gauntleted hand. Robin took it, the leather cold against his fingers, and decided not to question how readily he had accepted it. Slade hauled him to his feet before releasing his grip. "The mountain can't be reached by the weak. You need the strength of body -- "

The sword flashed, and in close quarters Robin could only block, not turn or parry. Each impact forced him back a step, putting him on the defensive.

"And the strength of _mind._ "

The car was behind him now. Slade was going to trap him, forcing him on the back foot.

_Not a chance._

At the next strike, he leapt, pushing off the car doors -- and _lunged._ Thrust, block -- it was a combo of moves he had perfected over the years. Robin dodged the next blow, landing two solid hits into Slade's torso. Even through the armour he could see Slade stagger, just for a second. In response, Slade swung at him, sword in one hand -- 

\-- and the other hand twisted down, slamming his wrist onto the car hood. Robin's staff wrenched away from his hand. 

Robin surged up, adrenaline pounding in his ears. Without the poison, in the lucidity of sunlight, the fight flooded through his veins. A dizzying spark of -- of exhilaration -- fueled his strength; he clamped one leg onto the arm still holding the sword, yanking it closer to his body for leverage. Sweat dripped in his eyes, soaking his clothes. He clenched his teeth, digging his heel as hard as he could into Slade's shoulder, his calf and thigh muscles trembling with exertion.

Slade dropped the sword -- and with his free hand, struck hard into his gut.

Robin choked, loosening his grip. The next blow he barely avoided, hardened leather grazing hard against his chin. The fist dented metal in the hood. Both of them were weaponless. He sprung onto the car roof, kicking aside the spare pieces of glass, his chest heaving in, out, his breaths heavy. He needed to steady his heartrate.

"Better." Slade slowly bent down and picked up his katana, and with a flick of the wrist the blade seemed to collapse in upon itself, reduced to a plain hilt. He stowed it away. "We'll continue this later."

Robin sucked in another breath, and wondered where his anger had burnt to. He was supposed to be mad, irritated, not...not instead feeling the electricity crackling under his skin, like he was on the cusp of something. Of -- of -- 

He snatched his staff up stiffly from where it was partially stuck in the car roof, the fight slowly mellowing back into reality in his bones. His chest felt sore from where the sword had struck him, and his muscles ached. His back was drenched in sweat as well.

He rubbed several drops off from his brow, watching Slade from the corner of his eye.

_It's just the adrenaline._

.

.

.

They went into an abandoned foundry tower during the afternoon. 

It rested on the incline of a small atoll. The factory had bleached the grass all around it, colouring it into a brittle, lifeless white; blades crunched under Robin's boots as he scouted around the area. Slade had disappeared into the building half an hour ago, ducking out of visible light as soon as possible.

It was empty here. A few roamers shuffled around the foot of the hill, but only stared at him with exhausted eyes as he circled the base. Robin thought of the crazed mass attacking him in the caves. 

_Something must have set them off._

For now, they watched him a little longer before drifting back into the shade. Robin's hand lingered on his belt, hestitant to withdraw his staff. Something about the slow, rocking motion they did while stationary reminded him of a person sleeping, shifting minutely when they were caught in the throes of their dreams. He slowly retreated back to the foundry, unable to completely tear his gaze away from the roamers.

"Do you know what they are?" he asked Slade, who stood several levels above him. The railings were more preserved than their flat counterparts, better protected from rusting, but they still creaked loudly when they were bent. The metal casts had long been destroyed, the tables upended and the vats empty, and all around the room was dry and cold like the interior of a mausoleum.

"Know what?"

"The roamers. Do you know where they came from?"

The sound Slade made was closest to a snort. " _R_ _oamers._ "

Robin bristled in indignation.

"No," Slade continued, steamrolling over Robin's annoyance. "But a better term would be _revenants._ They aren't exactly alive, but they're not dead either."

Robin thought of a one-eyed, skeletal face staring at him, the teeth pulled back in a rictus.

"So, a zombie."

Slade didn't bother to answer. Instead, he reached behind him -- where a set of shelves was toppled on its side -- and flung something down at Robin. Robin caught the items, the impact stinging his hands.

It was a bottle of water, as well as what looked like a bag of trail mix. Robin stared up at Slade in pure, dumb confusion.

"We're training here."

"In a _foundry._ "

"Do you have a better place in mind?"

 _Maybe anywhere else. Or_ with anybody _else, at least._ Robin's stomach growled, and he tore open the bag, wincing slightly at how dry the nuts smelled. Still, he ate in small handfuls, washing it down with sips of lukewarm water. 

"Aren't you going to eat?"

Slade shook his head. 

Robin continued eating. Salt made him lick his lips, and -- he glanced up at the other man, still leaning against the shelves. Waiting. He chewed another handful before zipping up the bag, stashing it into the pack.

It wasn't his first time eating with Slade. Back in the lair, Slade rarely ate in front of him -- or rarely did anything in front of him that didn't consist of combat, or cruelty -- but there had been a single instance where he had found Slade toweling a plate over the sink. Robin remembered standing at the threshold of the kitchenette, completely floored by an action painstakingly mundane.

Sometimes, he thought, he forgot that Slade was simply another human being. He didn't feel like it, not when he taunted and beat him into bloody shreds, looming in his dreams like a relentless force of nature. Not something he could counteract, or reckon with. Not someone that he could quietly eat trail mix nearby, making what could almost pass as casual conversation.

_This is insane._

Survival, Robin realised with a touch of bitterness, boiled down to that. Insanity. 

A question bubbled in the back of his head, even as he wiped his mouth dry. Slade still hadn't moved from his position. Robin wondered how long he could stay still like that -- maybe hours and hours of a motionless sentinel, gazing out at the ruins of a factory -- never moving, not even showing a sign of breath, simply taking everything in with one eye. 

"How can I trust you?"

Immediately he felt stupid for asking, but the question had quietly gnawed away all day in his gut. Slade _had_ saved him, but in the grand context of their history...it didn't exactly mean well.

Slade turned his head, ever so slightly.

"Now you're asking."

Robin scanned his surroundings. Getting down to the ground would require using the broken stairwell about a metre to his left, and then he'd have to grapple from the barrel arches at the rightmost corner. He'd have to smash through the grate to escape the building. It wouldn't be a clean getaway route, but if it came down to it...

He thought of Slade cutting up the man, as effortlessly as a butcher cleaving up meat, and shuddered.

"What's stopping you -- " and he shouldn't be asking it, he _shouldn't,_ but even back at the circus Robin had never shied away from touching the lions. "What's stopping you from stabbing me in my sleep?"

"Nothing," Slade replied, and the casualness of his tone made Robin's eyes widen. "But I didn't, last night. That should be enough faith for you."

_A deal is a deal._

"...you still haven't told me why _you_ wanted to go to the peak."

"It's certainly not the same reason as yours."

Robin shoved down the urge to tug at his hair. No matter where he went, no matter what happened, Slade always operated the same way. Half-truths, half-lies, words slinking under his skin. Never raising his tone above a smug calmness. The sort of person to watch an animal dying, twitching and broken, with a dim, faint amusement. 

"I assure you, Robin," and Slade's voice was so low, several metres up, that Robin almost didn't catch it, "it is in your best interest to work with mine."

"Or what, you'll hurt me?" 

"The two of us -- " Slade made a short, stiff gesture. "have a better chance than one." He straightened. "You're welcome to leave at any time, if you think you can survive another ambush."

Robin tightened his grip around the water bottle, wishing for a moment that it was Slade's throat. He wouldn't be able to _go_ through it, really, but the plastic still crunched loudly under his grasp.

"Follow me."

 _Training._ Robin stowed away the bottle before slinging the rucksack on his shoulders. A dull exhaustion pounded at his temples. _It's just training._

Slade leapt, twisting himself up to the next level, the railing bars bending under his weight. Robin stretched out his left arm -- maybe it was his imagination, but the wound seemed to be healing faster than he had expected -- and ran for the table.

_Jump, twist, catch._

The railing cut into his palms. He swung once, twice, his feet meeting nothing but empty air, and he vaulted onto the next landing. Slade was already scaling what looked like a broken pipeline, the shadows consuming his frame, and Robin scrabbled after. He had _trained_ this environment before -- closed spaces, poor light, climbing and jumping and utterly reliant on the urban framework -- but it was always with a grapple gun. His muscles strained as he climbed. The height grew dizzying, and he thought that any moment, he could fall -- feather-light, obedient to the air -- and he wouldn't even have time to save himself.

There was a low _thump_ up above. Slade had rolled into a crouch, watching Robin steadily ascend. The skylight of the foundry was closer now. A few shafts of pale light streaked along the walls, revealing the peeling paint dripping down dozens and dozens of metres below. Robin climbed higher, sweat crawling down his neck. 

"You're not used to this." 

Robin glared at Slade's silhouette, his hands shaking to hold his grip on the edge. One more level, and he could reach the skylight. Just one more. Below him was only the gaping maw of an abyss. 

"You don't know anything," he snapped back out.

"Possibly." Slade leant over the railing, elbows placed on the bar. Robin swallowed as lightly as he could, trying to ignore Slade's gaze resting on him, goosebumps prickling over his skin. "But you're untrained at this. You haven't done it in a long time."

"I didn't really -- " _Don't get mad. Clear your mind._ " -- get a _chance_ to."

"Well. Now you do."

An armoured hand reached down to him, grabbing his wrist, and yanked him up.

For a single, split second of terror it was only the hand holding him from the chasm below. The fear crushed all the air in Robin's lungs into a violent, sharp breath, like glass cutting into his chest. 

Then Slade dropped him onto the floor unceremoniously. The relief of solid ground under his feet made him gasp, clutching at the surface desperately. He really thought -- at that moment, he had thought Slade would --

Slade rolled his eye, as if he could sense Robin's thoughts. "Try not to fall again."

 _What_ \-- 

Robin yelped as Slade swung at him, the fist narrowly missing his gut by inches. "You can't be serious -- _here?_ "

"I told you we were training here."

"It's too _dangerous!_ " Another fist. Another dodge. Out on the roof, earlier, in the open space, he could grow accustomed to Slade's rhythm, to the balance of the fight, but here -- where one misstep meant certain doom -- he couldn't keep up. Not when the shadows flickered like flames, or the lightbulb above sputtering at intervals, drenching Slade in both darkness and light, and it was like -- it was like the dream _all over again,_ but this time it was _real_ \--

Slade's fist punched into the wall, concrete crumbling under the impact. Robin leapt, planting his feet onto Slade's shoulders, and lunged upward.

The skylight was still intact. The darkness made fear swell dizzily in his head, made his movements feral; if he tried to crack the glass, the shards would cut hard into his skin, and he couldn't afford losing more blood. He had to --

He barely dodged Slade's next strike -- he kicked at the arm, grunting as the second blow struck squarely at his shoulder. It occurred to him that Slade was _waiting,_ watching to see what he would do.

 _Screw_ _him,_ Robin thought bitterly. 

He wrenched upward, his feet smashing into the glass.

Shards rained down like hail. Robin flinched at its edges slicing along his legs -- at least it was mildly protected by the fibre of his leggings -- and tugged the cape over the rest of his body even as he slid downward. Shards cut uselessly into the titanium. When he touched his face, a thin stream of blood came away on his gloves.

_Light bleeding. Nothing I can do about it._

Using the wall for leverage, he jumped, clinging onto the intact edges, bursting out onto the roof. 

"Admirable, Robin." 

Robin spun around to find Slade climbing onto the roof, the armour slightly scratched but otherwise untouched. 

"I thought the glass might slow you down."

"Marginally." Robin expected the katana, expected the blade to rain down in silvery arcs, but Slade only withdrew a collapsible staff similar to his own. Robin narrowed his eyes; he remembered fighting amongst the gears as they creaked, turned, the cold rusty weight of the air --

 _I can't defeat him in a straight confrontation._ But Robin didn't grow up on the training mats, pressed hard and lined into orderly stances, rigid blows, the scrape of metal and wood and stone. He came first in a circus. He came where the air was his ally, where the ropes and ledges and the environment seized his bones, compelling him to _move._

Swing, block -- staple motions. Different than countering a sword. He wasn't fresh, either, not from the strain of the climb. If he wanted to win the fight --

 _If I could even win the fight_ \--

Then he had to end it quickly.

There was a single move that Robin could claim as his own. The others were a blend of his own skills and observations, watching Bruce demonstrate a kick or scrolling through aikido videos online throughout the years. The move he had structured was risky, as an understatement, and too dangerous to himself. It had little form, even less finesse, but right now...

The peak simmered in the distance.

 _For my friends._ Strength of mind, strength of body. It was eerily similar to what Bruce had always drilled in his head. _Both keep each other sharp._

He threw the staff at Slade's feet.

_Fast, calm breaths._

Slade didn't even flinch at the throw -- already he lashed out with his own staff, clipping Robin's feet midair. Robin twisted, slamming one foot down on an armoured shoulder --

_Go._

It was a bastardised version of the original move; he normally would wrap his legs around the opponent's neck before throwing himself backward into a headstand, putting pressure on the throat. It wouldn't work on Slade; the man was too heavy, too coated in metal and leather, to be affected by the torque. His own move, however...

Robin threw his weight back, wrapping one leg around Slade's throat, the other pinned to the shoulder.

Reflexively, Slade dropped his staff, already reaching up to slam Robin back onto the ground. The air rushed around him. Robin slammed his hand on the left side of Slade's mask. Blinding him would only buy him a few seconds, but it would be enough -- 

Robin clenched his jaw, wrenching back harder. Slade couldn't dislodge his leg and his hand at the same time. For the first time an unfamiliar lick of excitement raced up his spine -- he was _winning._ He hadn't won before alone, and now he was --

Slade dropped into a crouch, the movement so sudden that Robin loosened his hold in shock.

_Shit -- !_

"Not bad," Slade said, his voice slightly hoarser than usual. "But you'll need to try better."

Robin pulled, _tugged_ \-- but Slade's glove clamped around his knee, twisting it hard enough that he had to release unless he wanted a bone sprained. Pain flared up his thigh. He bit back a cry, instead trying to reassert the grip.

Slade grabbed his shoulder and hip and _threw_ him off.

He barely landed on his feet, and then Slade's staff swung downward in a vicious arc, cracking the concrete where it landed. _My staff._ He was defenseless, weaponless -- he swiped it off the ground, his balance lost, forgotten, unable to keep up --

Slade's hand shot out, closing around the staff, yanking Robin closer to him. 

_What is he --_

And with a brutal kick to the kneecap, Robin went down. 

Air tore out of his lungs. He heaved, trying to stand back up, but then Slade was pinning him onto the ground with the staff, the metal rod digging hard into his sternum. The bruise flared in fresh agony. 

_So close._ He was so close, enough that Robin could discern the faint outline of a jaw and mouth through the mask. Not clearly enough for any details, but... 

Robin swallowed, even as Slade pressed the staff down harder. His gloves brushed his chest. The leather was cold. Everything about Slade was cold, from his armour to his tone to the stare of his single eye. But it was someone he _knew,_ no matter how twisted the familiarity.

"I -- " Robin winced at the hitch in his breath. "I yield."

For a single second he thought Slade would continue to press down, pushing until the gloves would dig into his skin, and -- Robin swallowed again, in fear, in something else, all too aware of how visible the motion of his throat was -- so _close,_ the closest anything had ever been, his own breathing loud and harsh in his ears, and Slade absolutely silent --

Slade stood, the weight easing off of Robin's chest. 

Robin laid sprawled there, and -- _and_ \-- he wasn't sure why his heartbeat was so unsteady; adrenaline, panic, making his hands shake.

_Disappointment?_

"Adequate." Slade collapsed his staff, slipping it into his own belt. Robin got up slowly, the small ounce of praise pooling into something warm in his gut. "But not perfect."

Robin scowled. "Was I supposed to be?"

He thought Slade hesitated, but it was only his shoulders tensing a little. Like he hadn't expected the question.

The silence stretched, long and tense like a wire.

"No," he answered simply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i KNOW that's not the definition of a revenant...but it just sounds cooler, so i'm rolling w that
> 
> also, i don't know where the rucksack goes when they train...hyperspace? i dunno.
> 
> So far these chapters have been fairly exposition-heavy; I'm really trying to cut out that habit, but there's definitely some important details in the setting that will crop up later and I don't want to miss it or mess it up. Still, the plot is definitely going to pick up soon.
> 
> I'll also adjust the update pace to once/twice a week. 
> 
> Please feed the author comments :) And thanks so much for sticking out so far! Drop a kudos if you're enjoying it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some tags at the end.

_MRYUNDER. THE MAKER._

Robin glanced up at the figure at the end of the room. The warehouse was mostly empty, with a few crates piled haphazardly on the shelves, and he watched Slade climb to the uppermost windows. The ledge creaked softly under his weight. Slade sat there, back to the miniature alcove; it took a moment for Robin to realise he was taking watch.

"Still up, Robin?"

The sudden question made Robin almost drop Raven's tome. He opened it up again, his skin prickling at Slade's stare.

"I'm not sleeping with you watching."

It was a stupid reason, he thought acidly, doing his best to focus on the words. He _knew_ Slade had watched him during his time as an apprentice; the camera in his bedroom hadn't been for show. Slade had dragged him to the hospital that other night. If Slade wanted to hurt him, there were easily a hundred ways he could go about doing so. He shouldn't be used to it.

Yet each night, Robin had drifted off into sleep, his dreams shadowed and empty.

Slade said nothing, simply turning his head towards the window. 

The days had fallen into a rhythm. Robin would wake -- strangely, Slade never woke him to switch watches, and he'd never seen the other man sleep or even rest -- and they pushed closer to the bay. They trained on the roofs, abandoned factories, far from any urban avenue. Periodically they raided for supplies, and Robin would chew away on something dry and unappetizing as the sun fell. And always, Slade was there -- never truly leaving his periphery -- and unusually quiet, like he had forgotten Robin was there.

 _It's just like my apprenticeship._ Robin waited for the other shoe to drop, for Slade to grab him, beat him, coat his gloves with blood, but the moment hadn't come yet. The tension pinched at his chest. It felt like he was constantly walking a tightrope, and the person at the other end held a dagger. He would never know when the string would be cut.

And when it happened, it would be too late.

Robin clenched his fist, dragging his attention back to the tome.

It had spilled out of his rucksack on their third day. He had been swinging onto a roof, and then his feet slipped against the brick walls -- the morning was more humid than he had anticipated -- and the pack had sailed through the air, its contents spilling out onto the rooftop. Miraculously, whatever Beast Boy had created the pack must've been laced with tensile metal; the pack was only scruffed from the impact, looking no worse for the wear.

"A tome," Slade had commented, landing on the roof besides him.

It was a simple statement. A warning. Slade knew, and now Robin knew he knew as well. 

Robin flipped another page shakily, his muscles still tense from Slade's words. From the corner of his eye, Slade was as motionless as a statue, the moonlight blotting out his silhouette into a blur.

_Mryunder -- the MAKER -- is theorized to be one of the truly dead deities in the multiverse. Any remnant of it resides in the Astral Plane, where the graveyard of the gods rest._

_Its origin is unclear. Primal, mindless, thoughtless, it was regarded as a blight among the upper Planes. No one knows when it acquired consciousness -- a sharp, poisonous malice that sought to devour and cause pain. It was banished to the Lower Planes, but even the princes of Gehenna recoiled from its influence._

_For eons, Mryunder drifted as a liminal being. It never attacked outright, never fully faced confrontations, but it seeped its way into the dreams and nightmares of mortals. What it couldn't break down, it could corrupt. Whispers into ears, light nudges to sin, it operated on the threshold of consciousness._

_Its existence has waxed and waned as time passed. Deities, after all, depend on the power of belief, and gradually Mryunder faded away into obscurity. A sliver of it may still be found in the graveyard, but it is only that -- a sliver._

Below the text was a drawing of a face. Robin traced its outline, chills pooling at the base of the spine.

It had been the same face as the mask the maskers wore -- the terrible, glazed blankness, like a mind wiped clean. Robin traced it again, memorizing the shape under his fingers. 

_Just a coincidence._ Deities didn't really exist, anyways; Bruce had drilled that concept into his head. "If you ever hear of one," he had said, "they're likely just a very powerful meta. Or even an omniscient being. But not the kind of deity you're thinking of." He had quieted at that, resting his fingers in Dick's hair.

Robin shook off the memory. _A meta. Just think of it as another meta._ When it came down to it, everything boiled down to the existence of powers. Raven had them; so did Beast Boy and Starfire. Cyborg had built his own. And Robin...

He glanced up at Slade again, anger curling around his heart.

 _You can't even defeat_ _me._

And what was the risk in asking?

"The people that attacked me the other day," he began, a sudden dryness seizing his throat. Only the slight motion of Slade raising his head indicated that he was listening. "They were metahumans, weren't they?"

"Your attackers?"

"Both of them." Robin remembered the flash of blades, slicing through the air effortlessly. 

There was a certain _movement_ in martial metahumans that wasn't found in ordinary people -- the pull and strike of muscle, the density of bone, guiding their movements that was just slightly off-kilter from how it was supposed to move. Too fast for their buik. Too strong for their size. The first masker he had fought had been wearing armour, but the _speed_ and stamina he had moved with...

It was the same fluidity that Slade had.

Robin wrestled down the impulse to fully facepalm himself. It had never occurred to him, even when he was buried deep in his notes back at the Tower, that Slade might have been a meta. He had _seen_ Slade jump dozens of feet like it was nothing, punching through concrete like it was made out of plaster. He thought of Slade leaping through the air with the fiery axe, a leap that -- by all means -- was physically impossible.

He couldn't even pretend to be surprised. It didn't matter, in the long run. It didn't get him closer to the mountain.

 _Weak,_ Slade had taunted so long ago, kicking Robin into the training mats. _Pliable._

 _Of course I am._ Robin bit his lip so hard he could taste blood on his tongue. _I'm_ human. _I can only do so much._

"You're meta as well."

This time Slade turned to him fully, armoured legs dangling off of the ledge. 

"You're _now_ figuring it out?"

"I -- " _How the hell was I supposed to know_ didn't fly here, not when he had personally _fought_ Slade before. He had firsthand witnessed the speed and strength of his strikes. It shouldn't have been more of a surprise than rain falling downwards. "So all that time you were _training_ me -- I never even had a chance." 

Slade's laugh was cold. "You've defeated beings ten times your size and power, Robin. You've always had a chance."

Robin's head snapped up in surprise.

"Thinking otherwise," and his voice was still soft, low enough to sound like a threat, "is a waste of time."

 _Control your anger._ It built deeply in his gut, boiling like a pot ready to tip over, but he bit his tongue. It felt like a physical effort just to stop his words from spilling out -- _How? Why? It doesn't make it better_ \-- and he breathed in, breathed out, forcing his pulse to relax. _Strength of mind. Strength of body._ The arm was a distant ache now, his body throbbing with a faint soreness. _It's just a temporary partnership. You've worked with him before._

_You'll see your friends soon._

Thinking of his friends made him relax, if barely.

He shot a glare at Slade. "Do you at least know anything about the maskers?"

"Why do you ask?"

 _How much information should I give him?_ "The tome," he said instead. Slade likely knew it was Raven's, anyways. "I...I read about the plane, and there's the same image as the mask on the page. I don't think it's a coincidence."

Slade waited.

"I'm not giving you the tome."

"Well," and at that Slade leant back on the wall, "you'll have to live in perpetual doubt, then."

_Bastard._

Robin thought of shoving the tome across the warehouse floor, but the thought of scraping up the leather made him flinch internally. It had been Raven's gift to him. The least he could do was preserve it.

_Or not give it to a known enemy._

It was hard to tell in the shadows, but the way Slade's eye glimmered suggested he was smirking. Robin shuffled closer, goosebumps crawling down the back of his neck. At this position, Slade was a metre above his head, and he could see the deep, lined soles of his boots from below.

Slowly, like a grade-A asshole, Slade reached down and took the tome from Robin's hands. The book was still open to where Robin had left it. For a while, the only sound was his own breathing, slow and tense, while Slade traced a finger down the parchment. The warehouse had steadily dropped in temperature. A gradual ice crept up Robin's spine as he watched Slade's eye flicker between the words.

"This is Daemonic text," Slade finally said, a slight edge in his voice.

Robin frowned. "It's normal words to me."

"No, it's..." Slade trailed off, and Robin realised he was hanging onto the lost words, teetering on the edge. He mentally kicked himself. "It isn't a standard script." Robin waited for Slade to elaborate, but instead the other man closed the tome carefully, danging it back to him. He took it quickly. 

Robin scowled. "No answers?"

"A partial solution." Slade rested his elbows on his knees, metal scraping softly. "There's a gateway to the foothills of the peak. It will bring us as geographically close as possible."

"What does this have to do with the tome?"

"Nothing," Slade answered quietly. "It was simply a suggestion."

Robin flipped back to the pages, a tiredness creeping into his bones. The words floated back up at him in fragments and pieces -- _Mryunder -- Astral -- graveyard_ \-- the handwriting eldritch, but otherwise standard. He didn't see anything off about it.

 _Daemonic...?_

"How far away is the gateway?" he asked instead, stowing that bit of information into the back of his mind. 

.

.

.

Surprisingly, the old water tower still stood at the edge of the city, its pipes rusted and hollow as he climbed. The sun shone warmly on his back. Above, gulls cawed in the air, the smell of brine and salt crashing along the cove. A zephyr caressed his face, wrapping softly around his neck.

"I could have flown you," Starfire said, sitting at the top of the tank. The sun lit her from behind, casting a faint, hazy halo around her frame.

Robin hauled himself onto the tank's surface.

"That wouldn't be fun," he protested. She pulled him up by the last metre, her grip solid and strong.

"It would be less harm to you!"

"I'm fine." He grinned at her, even biting off a glove and showing her his hands. "Same old palms. I've climbed worse before."

Starfire rolled her eyes, a hint of her own smile touching her mouth. "I have seen you scale the _entire Tower_ before, Robin."

"It's just a self-imposed challenge! Ow," he complained when she smacked him on the shoulder, if relatively lightly. "So what did you want to do here?"

"Since you are so insistent on climbing, maybe you would not like it."

"Try me."

He regretted his words a second later as iron-hard arms grabbed him from under the armpits, pulling him into empty air. Reflexively he twisted, trying to wrench himself out of the grip, but then the scent of Star's hair tickled his nose, and it felt like someone had injected him with a relaxant. The smell grounded him, even as Starfire flew higher, the air whipping around their faces.

"Star -- " he began, his voice hoarse.

The sight...he could barely describe it, the way it punched deep into his stomach. They were over open waters now, a run of golden sun splitting the sea into rippling swathes of pale cerulean. The light struck off of the salt cliffs, pebbles and sand cascading thousands of feet into the waves, reflecting a brilliant sheen across the shore. The water tower glistened a deep, pulsing red in contrast to its rust, the shadows steepled in deep violet. The air rushed around him, exhilarating, the salt rippling and foaming in delicate plumes. Robin's stomach swooped in a mixture of thrill and delight.

_This is what flying feels like._

"How is it?" Starfire shouted over the wind. They descended until Robin's boots skimmed atop the water. Below was only emptiness, beckoning and cold, but it was wide and free and -- and Robin laughed, his voice cracking.

"It's _incredible!"_ he shouted back. He had been on planes before, flyers, grapples and swings, yet right now..unbidden to gravity, defying its very rules, he couldn't put it to words. He let out a whoop that he'd be embarrassed over later, if not for Starfire's laugh joining his. The sky flashed past in stripes of purple and black, silver and gold, winding through the stars like ribbons. All the while Starfire held him, and he never doubted her strength -- not even for a second -- as cold water lapped at his ankles.

The sun was a low burn on the horizon when they finally returned to the tower. Robin's face felt numb from the air, but he couldn't stop the grin from splitting his face as Starfire lowered him onto the tank.

"I..." Starfire's smile practically radiated smugness, but her eyes were gentle. "Star, that was -- " He flushed, his heart squeezing from more than just the adrenaline. Everything was muted, like a scene pulled from an old, dreamy movie, the sunlight soft on their skin. "That was something," he concluded, his heartbeat pounding in his eardrums.

Starfire leaned in and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Warmth blossomed like a flower from where her mouth made contact.

"Happy birthday, Robin," she said, her voice just as soft.

.

.

.

"You're insane."

Time had blurred. Robin couldn't tell if it had been days, or even weeks, but somehow it culminated to him and Slade dragging a damn rowboat across the sands to where the sea touched the shore.

"Isn't most of Gotham as well?" Robin opened his mouth and closed it abruptly. He couldn't argue with that. "If you have another way of walking across water, I'm open to ideas."

It was almost nightfall. Robin closed his eyes briefly, and he could pretend that it was just him and Starfire at the water tower again, surrounded by only salt and sky. He couldn't easily transpose the memory, not when the air smelled faintly of metal, or when the sea was silent, its surface as smooth as a polished mirror. No ripples or waves dared to break the water. The sands were completely dry, each fine grain separate from one another as they slipped between his soles.

A splinter snagged at his fingers, and through the dull material of the glove a prick of pain crept up his finger. The rowboat's wood was partially rotted, a smell floating up from its interior like an unearthed grave, and his muscles strained from towing it across the beach.

"You know," he spoke aloud, trying to distract himself from the physical strain, "I don't really have a way of knowing if you're just luring me to some kind of death-trap."

Thankfully, Slade didn't drop his end of the boat out of spite. "You'll have to go to your grave with that assurance, I suppose."

Robin's heart leapt into his mouth -- it took him a second to realise that Slade was joking, in the way serial killers usually did before skinning a cat alive. 

"That's not funny."

"I imagine few things are by your standards." Robin inwardly bristled, but then Slade lowered his end halfway into the water. "We'll push from here." He yanked out a set of oars from the rotted wood, the splinters groaning loudly in the silence. Together they pushed the rowboat into the water, only a faint current nudging them away from the shore. It brought back another memory; one of a boat over molten lava, while the world remained petrified above.

"Brings back memories, doesn't it?"

How Robin ended up making _small talk_ with a murderer would never make sense to himself. He rowed his side, grateful for the diversion. 

"Not any good ones," he said, his voice coming out more hostile than he had intended.

Slade's rows were slower, if more powerful, the wooden head sweeping soundlessly through the water. The cold smell from land had mostly dissipated over the sea, although Robin's unease grew as the shoreline faded from sight. Beyond that were the hazy silhouettes of buildings and rooftops, away from his attackers, from civilization and life. He shuddered.

Another stroke. Further silence.

"What were you?"

As soon as the question had spilled from his lips, Robin wanted to curl up from the humiliation. He wasn't even sure what he had meant, only that there was some vague definition of _before_ and _after_ when it came to Slade -- although he didn't know where that line began and ended. He stared resolutely at his oar, his mask itching around his eyes. He hadn't dared to take it off in Slade's vicinity.

Stroke.

_Splash._

"You'll need to be a little more specific than that, Robin."

"I know you were in the military." Slade had told that to him personally, even as the man had gouged metal fingers into his bullet wounds. It hadn't exactly come as a surprise, not with the tasteless meals and the rigid order within the lair. "I know you're a meta. And I'm betting that these two facts have something to do with each other."

Slade hummed softly. "Your bets are your own."

"And -- " _Don't,_ his rationale begged him, but a strange, dark recklessness gripped Robin's mind, one that had seethed and bubbled the longer he was stuck here. "And that you were married."

Slade stilled.

Robin gazed out at the sea. Slade had described their destination as an island, one that only rose at a certain time between sunfall and night. A faint, dark shape rose on the horizon.

"It's also related," Robin ventured, taking the silence as confirmation.

Slowly, Slade lowered his oar, carefully placing it on the planks. He leant over, and Robin instinctively released the oar, shrinking from -- 

_I'm not going anywhere._

Cold fingers lightly grasped his jaw, a finger resting over his pulse. Fear spiked into Robin's chest; he didn't dare to breathe, didn't dare to draw attention, and all the while his mind screamed at his _stupidity,_ his utter impulsiveness -- the hand slid down lower, until it curled around his throat. The press of fingers were as soft as Starfire's touch.

"Robin," Slade murmured, "you're not moving away."

 _If I did, you would kill me._ He could easily imagine it in his mind's eye; Slade holding him down, strangling him as his body jerked and writhed, wringing the air out of his lungs. Dropping his corpse into the sea. He could fight, he could struggle -- and the outcome would be the same; Slade's grey eye studying him, tracing his face, even as his limbs rested with a finality on the wood. The darkness would swarm him, swallow him full, dragging him into nothingness.

"I -- "

Slade's grip tightened -- not enough to cut off air, but a warning. Robin's hands flew up to clasp the wrist, ready to wrench him off, and his fingers encircled Slade's. Cold, sharp edges. Everything about Slade was.

He didn't know how long they stayed like that, resting on the cusp of breathing, like a thread danging before his eyes. Easily severed. _A tightrope._ Cold and heat flushed through Robin in slow, agonizing waves, and he swallowed, the muscle of his throat pushing gently against Slade's fingers. Crushing it would be effortless.

Slade stared at him, his eye burning with an emotion that Robin didn't dare to identify. Sparks simmered at the corner of his vision. Each breath he took felt like it would rip through his lungs, pooling warm around his gut. His stomach tightened and tense, something fluttering lowly in his gut.

_I can't be --_

Without thinking, Robin parted his lips slightly -- ostensibly for air, even as heat crept into his face, spreading to his ears.

_I can't be._

Slade released him suddenly.

"You dropped the oar."

"..." Robin twisted around, and found only an expanse of darkened sea. 

_I'm not --_

He shifted his thighs, trying to ignore it. To quell it. If he acknowledged it, then it meant...

_That's fucked up. That's so fucked up._

"Not that it matters," Slade said, and Robin thought he might've imagined the slight sharpness in the other man's voice. "We're here."

The shape loomed before them, solidifying as a jut of rock, peeling back to a rocky shore. An incline of stone. Cracked, weathered, the stone glossy and dark as obsidian, what looked like a set of shacks rested on the atoll. The island came into view, silent and cold as the surrounding sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> semi-mild instance of fearplay .
> 
> Mryunder is pretty much based off Moander from Forgotten Realms, not that I've played it before.
> 
> Wow, so I'm just kicking out these chapters...maybe they'll even go somewhere. ALso, I just burned through Priest's deathstroke run last week and...slade is just such a fucked up guy?? Like, he's got morals and all, but he's also just such a bastard 
> 
> Leave a kudos/comment, etc, etc :)


	8. Chapter 8

"The rowboat will be unnecessary from this point on," Slade said as Robin moved to tie the vessel down. "If we don't succeed in passing through the gateway, there will be worse problems than a lack of transportation."

Robin considered his words before tying it into a squat post. "I'd like to keep our options open, thanks."

Slade turned away. Robin followed after him, doing his best not to slip on the rocky incline of the island. The shore smoothed out into a surface as blank as glass, the chiaroscuro glinting along the roughened edges of the shack. Up close it wasn't much, only the size of several sheds put together, but he knew better.

"Take out your weapon, Robin."

Robin placed a hand on his belt, feeling the edge of the cube press into his palm. _He didn't ask me about it. He hasn't even brought it up._ On a second thought, he let his fingers drift to his staff instead, curling around the familiar ridges and texture.

Slade's hand moved slightly, but Robin caught the flash of silver thrown across the ground. 

"Once we are inside," Slade started slowly, his voice barely above a whisper, "do _not_ wander off. Do not draw attention to yourself. Don't even talk, unless you have to."

"Does someone live here?"

"You could say that."

 _How do you know all this?_ pressed at Robin's tongue, but this time he kept his mouth shut, remembering Slade's hand wrapped around his throat. Still, Slade had navigated the plane with some sort of primal ease, like a shark hunting in their home waters, finely attuned to the rhythm of daylight and roamers -- _revenants_ \-- and the very environment itself, like he had resided here all his life. Robin frowned after the man's back.

"This used to be a house." Slade bent down to the shack's plank and slowly pulled it open, revealing a small, dark space barely visible in the moonlight. Cold air rushed out of the opening. "This way."

_I'm following a psychopath into an unknown house. Beast Boy would be proud._

To his mild surprise, Slade crept in first -- it looked like the darkness swallowed him up, absorbing his head and limbs. Robin shook off the visual and followed, hands clenched around his staff. A small yellow flame illuminated Slade's frame in the shadows -- Slade was holding up a single match, a wisp of smoke curling from the head.

"A flashlight -- "

 _Draws too much attention,_ Slade signed, much to Robin's astonishment, the movements practiced even with the flame trailing behind the motion of his hands. _Stay silent._

They had crawled into a tunnel, apparently. The ceiling was low, low enough that Slade had to duck as the ground sloped downward, and Robin could feel sweat beading on his neck. The walls glistened with cold moisture. He could barely see Slade from here, the wavering flame serving as the only source of light. Further and further down they went, much further than the shack could possibly hold. Their steps were soft and muted, pressing a quiet rhythm against the ground.

 _Thirty steps. Forty._ He counted them like they were the seconds crawling by. _Fifty. Sixty._ The flame wavered and flickered, casting an odd sheen across the walls. The surface seemed to glimmer. When he breathed out slowly, his breath left his mouth in a puff of white mist.

_Cold._

Robin froze in his tracks.

Two sets of footsteps. There were only two sets. Yet, in the brief period where Slade had kept walking and he had halted, he had _heard_ it.

Slade paused too, the flame still burning between his fingers.

 _Slade,_ Robin signed, his hands stiff with the motions. _There's --_

"Cold," the voice said again, soft enough that it could have been a sigh.

_Footsteps._

Soft. Irregular. Halting, limping. Something rough dragged across the ground, like a snake shedding its skin.

Slade's hand closed around the match, plunging the tunnel into darkness.

_Thump._

Fingers grabbed his arm. Robin jolted at that, heart leaping into his throat, but it was only Slade. He was tracing something slowly into his skin.

_Don't run._

Robin nodded, and somehow Slade must have seen it, since his hand fell away. His skin prickled at the lack of contact. 

_Someone lives here,_ Slade had all but said earlier.

Robin knew how to fight blind. He had been eleven then when Bruce gently tied a blindfold around his eyes, guiding him to the training room with a light hand on his elbow. He had long learned how to amplify his other senses, letting gravity instead of sight carry his feet, smells and textures and tastes sink slowly into his senses. Scrapes of metal and stone. The pitch and tenor of voices. He knew them like the back of his hand. 

Yet...

It didn't make a difference if he opened or closed his eyes now -- he picked the former, clinging onto the slight sense of comfort it lent him. _Thump. Drag._ Whatever it was, it wasn't walking bipedally. 

_Crawling._

_A roamer,_ Robin thought, but roamers didn't speak. None of the ones he encountered had ever spoken anything, at least -- they had screeched and screamed and growled, but none had ever toed into language. 

The steps came closer. 

In the stillness, each heartbeat -- fast, furious, panicked -- felt like a gunshot in his ears. He had been through worse. He had fought through worse.

"Cold," the voice said, so softly.

There was no warning. One moment Robin was still standing, withdrawing his staff, and then the next moment something cold struck his stomach. It felt like a needle had been shoved through his abdomen.

The pain swarmed all at once, and it felt like glass shattering in his own organs.

He crumpled to his knees, the ground sending a spike of agony up his legs. No, he had -- he had _fallen_ , and when he went to cup his stomach it wasn't just blood spilling onto his hands. Silver. Silver bled out from his body, soulless and empty, the fog rolling over the sea. It poured out and out and mixed with the blood -- 

"You killed me," said the voice, and he could feel what felt like a mouth moving close to his ear. His spine tingled. He wasn't breathing - he never was. A dull blankness crept into his mind; distantly he was aware of _someone_ saying something, the sound echoing and unreal, as if he stood in an empty amphitheatre. 

_Five. Five senses._

Nothing to see. Silent. Soundless. He didn't even know if he was standing, but the wood under his feet might as well been dust. Ash filled his mouth, stuffed to the back of his throat, filthy and dark and raw. Plummeting, descending; strands of silver slipped from his fingertips, threads lacing and dissolving into empty air. The strands were woven into his skin, incised and sewn. He couldn't even feel the air rushing around him. Trapped in statis, an embryo in the womb, an avian caught in the storm. Too much senses and none at all. 

_The void._

_This is how my parents died._

And it was that fear that woke him.

Whatever haze that had flushed through his mind receded, not exactly going away, like the tide drawing back. The sea before a tsunami. And what it revealed -- the shells, the sands, the ugly truths beneath -- shone into plain, crystalline view.

Robin gasped like a sailor crawling onto shore, his lungs heaving in and out. It felt like a metal hand wrung out each tissue. He tried to calm his breathing, rein his senses back in, but it felt like he was going to vomit broken glass. He was lying on something. His hands, numb and now gloveless, weakly clawed at the surface.

Wood. Old and grainy, like the wine cellar under the manor; a smell of damp rot floated up into Robin's nostrils. He must have been in some sort of basement, although the damp odour was laced with salt. 

Bruce had once taken him to a cove for a recon mission. He had been tasked with watching the promenade, and it was at twilight that their target -- a hybrid-man-fish-thing -- had slunk out from the beneath the boardwalk. Robin had leapt into action, letting the sun guide his jump, and followed after it. It wasn't hiding in some small nook beneath the planks; there was a series of tunnels that flooded when the tide came in, burrowing deep into the sand.

It was where he had found the bodies, stacked one over another, some still partially chewed. Starfish, clams, bones of fish littered the morass. And the _smell_ \-- Robin hadn't even been able to put it in words. Vomit. Decay. The smell of burnt hair, sloughed skin and fat, charred bone. They had captured the thing, turning it over to the League, and for the next few hours all Robin had done was vomit violently into the sea.

It was a different smell here, colder and less mordant, yet the same gallows-deep, bottomless _stench_ choked the air, lingering on the back of his tongue. The same stomach-turning fetor, coupled with the burning dryness of the cold. Robin blinked back tears of protest, his limbs refusing to move. He felt boneless; gutted. He cupped his stomach, but his hand came away dry.

_Mind-altering substance._

He was no stranger to it -- Gotham's finest took to psychoactive toxins like a sparrow to air -- but it didn't mean he would ever get used to it. The way it seized on every nerve, pushing and pulling until you hung over a precipice, with only malicious, cackling emptiness below. How many times had he run face-first into Scarecrow? Fallen into Ivy's garden? Each time, his body became a puppet, a shell, and it chipped away a little of himself.

Robin pushed himself to his knees, his bones aching.

If the fall hadn't been real... _but it was. I'm not in the tunnel anymore._ He glanced up, expecting to find a crack or gap where the floor had given away.

A plain, high ceiling greeted him.

A single lantern burned nearby, throwing orange patterns along the ground. It was dim enough that he couldn't see the walls even when he picked up the light, searching for some sort of doorway. His legs wobbled with effort, and his head spun as he stumbled on his left foot.

 _Belt. Weapons._ His hands drifted to each. His staff was missing.

Back in the Tower he would've just pulled out a spare from the training room, but he wasn't at the Tower anymore. He was in some gross, creepy basement suffused with an ancient decay in the breathing air. He still had other tools -- flashbangs, birdarangs, and -- 

His hand touched the cube.

He didn't have a choice -- _a lie_ \-- unless he wanted to be impaled early.

The cube was still its glossy black. Robin stared hard at it, trying to will it back to the sword he had used. 

Nothing happened.

 _Damnit._ Still, Robin held onto the cube, the other raising the lantern. If there had been a lantern there, still burning, then someone must have been here recently. They hadn't harmed him.

 _Or maybe,_ a voice said in his head, a voice similar to the man in his nightmares, _you're lying to yourself._

"Slade?" he called out tentatively.

Silence.

The room was endless. He walked a good deal, casting the light side to side, but all it revealed was decayed wood. No furniture or ornaments; nothing to indicate any sign of hospitality. He raised it, searching for sconces, light holders, pipes or rails. Nothing. Just endless wooden floor, plank grafted into plank, the quiet ringing in his ears.

The light in the lantern burned lower.

_Drip._

If he hadn't been staying still at the moment, he wouldn't have heard it over his footsteps. He had crouched down, dragging the light over the floorboards, and --

_Plink._

A droplet.

Robin leant forward, desperately trying to listen.

_Plunk._

The sound came from behind.

Robin sucked in as much air as possible, his stomach heaving as the smell roiled deep in his gut, and followed the sound.

_Drip._

A leak.

_Plink._

It would explain the dampness as well. Robin slipped the cube back into his belt, uncomfortable with how his hand reflexively curled around empty air.

_Plunk._

The drop landed on his head.

Slowly, Robin raised the light.

It wasn't the showerhead that made his stomach drop to his _fucking feet,_ so much as the gaping, smiling face that rested above it, the eyes long rotted and gone. The -- _thing_ \-- stared at him, perching lightly on the rusted showerhead that protruded at least a foot from the wall.

_Drip._

The showerhead wasn't dripping water.

_Drip._

A black, bloody puddle spread. The thing wore the same glazed, eerie expression as the one the maskers had worn. The same image he had seen in Raven's tome.

_Drip._

"Found you," the thing whispered, the exact voice from the tunnel above. Robin didn't see its mouth move, but -- the _voice_ ; it was so soft, like a feather brushing his ear, as cold and unforgiving as the depths of a well.

Robin turned, and ran.

The light snuffed out. He didn't care -- he flung the lantern behind him, hearing it shatter into fragments of wood and glass. He didn't care, didn't care, _didn't care_ \-- all he knew was running, running across a featureless room, fear strangling his airways, no chair or desk or anything to help him gain footing. Just an empty plane. An empty plane tilting towards nothing, the thing's footsteps quick and graceful as it followed.

"Don't run," it said, almost regretfully.

Robin whipped around, and it seemed like the most natural thing to sling out the sword, the blade erupting from absolute emptiness. Blue flames lit up the room -- different from the soft, mellow warmth of the lantern -- an icy aura that tore the air apart.

"Stay _back,_ " he snarled, his tongue swollen in his mouth. From here, he could only see the eyes glittering -- not eyes, but _lights._ It was the filaments of a light bulb burning long after it had been turned off; a revenant of something long after it had died. It shouldn't have been here.

"Stay back!" he shouted again, his hand rigid on the hilt. "I said stay back!"

The thing's smile seemed to split. it grew wider, and wider, encompassing the face, the skull, dragging pale, rotten skin into exaggerated proportions. When it opened the mouth it looked like the entire head was hinged, the maw dark and empty. The lights never left its eye sockets.

The same pulsing, hazy filter crept over his eyes. Something burned on his mouth. He tried to speak again, tried to shout back, but what came out was a lifeless rasp. The mouth stretched wider, and wider, until it shouldn't even be physically possible, but...

_I can't..._

Seawater lapped at his ankles. Cold -- colder than polar ice -- yet he felt himself sinking into the waves, freezing lines of salt drenching his calves. The water was rising, inundating the wood. The sea roared in his ears.

"It's not the sea."

The thing had changed. Less concrete, more of a shadow, a rippling mass of -- _something_ \-- submerging into the water. Robin lashed the blade out to the mass, the light thin and cutting. The mass rose, broke apart into threads, reformed, the voice high and crackling and low and menacing. Fragile like glass. Unmovable as a citadel. 

"You," Robin croaked. "You're -- "

 _I'll tell you a secret,_ _Grayson,_ the voice whispered, and the shadow blossomed into radial, fractal patterns. Robin couldn't blame it on the psychotropic, not when some primal, deep part of him flinched back, the vulnerability of human unable to process the void. The sight reached his eyes; his retinas, filtering into his brain. Meaningless. His mind couldn't -- couldn't --

 _The only reason you are alive,_ the dead god murmured, _is because of this_.

Fingers -- painstakingly human -- wrapped nonchalantly around the blade. Robin felt paralyzed. The sea had risen to his waist, amorphous shapes writhing below, and the fingers eased the edge of the sword to his throat. The flat pressed into his skin, the blue flare almost blinding.

 _And the only reason you remain_ _so,_ Mryunder continued, never raising their voice, _is because I allow it._

The sea swelled upward.

 _Welcome,_ and the voice was already dying away, as frail as a broken thread of gossamer, _to my home._

The sea dragged Robin down.

With Starfire, flying over the water was nothing. It was only a byproduct of the sky, a mirror for starlight, and the vastness meant as little to him as a stray pebble on the road. Here, trapped in his head, he could only sink.

The sword still glowed. Bubbles escaped from his mouth; he surged upward, his head breaking the waves. _Swim. Swim for your life._ Now he could see the room he had been in, as the light expanded from the blade -- it was an enormous chamber, the walls barely visible even here, and the sea swallowed the ground whole.

It would be easy, Robin thought, to stop swimming. To sink down, and down, and never float again.

The water covered his head.

He swam. Hands tugged at his shoes, his legs, and the salt seared in his eyes -- there had been roamers living here, dozens, _hundreds,_ but not while the ocean devoured them all -- and he clawed for air. There was no longer wood under his feet. The light of the sword lanced through the water like a spear. His head plunged in and out, black spots patterning in his vision. He couldn't struggle for this long. 

_One minute. Two. Five._ The nest time he broke the surface, he sucked in another gulpful of air, the salt burning down his tongue. The waves reclaimed him. _Seven. Ten._ Already, exhaustion seeped into his legs. 

_Twelve. Fifteen._

The cold was taking hold. He could barely feel his feet now, much less his fingers, but they refused to release the sword. For a terrifying moment, he didn't break out of the water _at all._

_Eighteen. Twenty._

The cold crept up his chest. He could feel its fingers lacing around his neck, just like Slade had done. A noose, pulling him closer to things he shouldn't want.

_Twenty-one._

The seawater trickled into his mouth and down his chin. A strange, muggy fog rolled into his body, relaxing his nerves.

The haziness before a dream.

_Twenty-three._

_I'm sorry,_ he thought, and he wasn't sure who he was saying it to. _I'm sorry._

_Twenty-five._

Something seized his wrist, dragging him out of the void, even as his mind slowly drifted into blackness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Showers was like the first creepypasta I read, and it scared me shitless back in the day. Still does. Took some inspiration from it.
> 
> Uhh for mryunder they look like...idk, try the trope "Eldritch Abomination." Think the Snarl from OOTS, or one of the angels from neon genesis evangelion. Or anything lovecraftian, I guess.
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning tags at the end.

"Robin!" One green eye blinked open, even as the other remained closed. "You are late."

"Yeah. Mugging case back in South Alley."

"I see." Starfire shifted, craning her head to catch the waning sunlight. Raven floated besides her on the roof, the sea breeze shifting strands of her hair back and forth across her shoulders. Seven candles surrounded her in a circle. Robin sat next to Starfire. On the other side of the candles, Beast Boy and Cyborg slumped against each other, the sun glinting off of the latter's metalled shoulders.

"Anything happen?"

Starfire shook her head slowly, trying to hide a yawn. "I do not think so. Raven had to use some of their energy to search further."

"Got it." It was barely there, but he could _feel_ Raven's power slowly settling into him, a mild cold that grew under his bones. Even someone like Starfire couldn't hold it off forever. Starfire mumbled something, leaning against his shoulder, her hair tickling his nose.

"Hey."

"Mm." The sun was setting, a scatter of stars rimming the edge of the horizon. Still, Raven't hadn't moved. She was murmuring low under her breath, soft enough to be a sigh. "How did the case go?"

"I told you, it was just a mugging. I took care of it."

"Of course." Starfire slumped further, her body sagging with drowsiness. "...of course..."

He couldn't count how many times they had fallen asleep next to each other. Robin took off one glove and lightly touched Starfire's hair. The red glowed so deep, so bright, and the sight never failed to strike him in the gut. The sun lit it in a blazing aura, coating their skin with a warm sheen. The air was warm and salty, a smell ingrained deep into his mind, and he absentmindedly watched Raven's cloak flutter.

"I'm done."

Raven had opened her eyes. Purple glinted in her irises before she levitated herself back onto the ground, drawing the hood over her face. Robin blinked several times, trying to clear the exhaustion from his head. Cyborg and Beast Boy were already stirring, each simultaneously making a gagging sound as they scooted far away from each other. Starfire rubbed at an eye, using Robin's shoulder as leverage to push herself upright.

"Raven -- "

Raven glanced up at the sky, her expression weary. "It's getting closer everyday. It'll be here soon."

"...shit," Cyborg muttered. Nervousness made him attach and detach the plating at his wrist; somehow, the clicking sound had became a source of comfort the past few weeks. "So it's just...just another Trigon? Something we can't fight against?"

"Mryunder is different." Raven gestured, and the candles blew out one by one. Violet smoke trailed from the stubs of wax. "There's no _fighting._ It's like -- it's like trying to fight against the tide. You won't win like that."

"This is a nightmare," Beast Boy muttered, head sinking into his hands. "We barely lived fighting through Raven's crazy dad, now we have to..." The groan he let out made Robin wince. "C'mon, Rae, please be kidding."

"That's the risk of defeating interdimensional demons." Raven tugged the cloak around her despite the warmth of the air. "It leaves....gaps, so to speak. It allows other things to crawl through."

Robin frowned. Slade had said something similar a month ago, amongst the fallen gears. 

_Few are as powerful as him, but they're attracted here. This world has too many weak spots and too many people to feed on._

"A power vacuum," Starfire spoke up. "It is a cycle. Those ambitious and with malice exploit the gaps, taking advantage of the same people who cannot fight back." Her voice hardened. "I have witnessed many of them in my childhood."

"Something like that, yeah." Raven sat down with them tiredly. Dark rings circled her eyes, and her shoulders trembled a little as she adjusted her cloak. "I...all I sense is this...this _emptiness._ It's not shadow, it's not some dark patch -- it's just an absence of _anything._ I don't know what to make of it. But it's growing."

_You'll need it._

"Raven..." Robin chewed his lip, wondering how to phrase the question safely. "Is there possibly a way we could...evade it? Like last time?"

"What do you mean?"

 _No,_ he thought, answering his own question. It had only worked because Raven herself remained alive. Another thought nagged at him, and he bit the inside of his mouth, trying to frame it into words.

"The ring of Azar."

"It's destroyed," Beast Boy interjected. "Broken into pieces, dude. And it didn't really help us against Trigon -- "

"It protected Slade." The words came out before Robin even had time to process it.

The other Titans stared at him. Robin's throat went dry.

"...what?"

"I..." He mentally flailed, reaching for answers. "He -- he told me. When we went to rescue you, Raven."

The tension relaxed. Robin thought of the cube, still resting in the depths of his drawer, and his fingers tingled with a phantom pressure. It always lingered on the edge of his consciousness, like a stray gust of wind or something just out of the corner of his sight, a shadow flitting in his periphery. 

"There's artifacts like that against deities," Raven conceded. "But you'd usually have to find them in the deity's own realm, since they'd try to watch over it. They wouldn't want it getting into other people's hands."

"And this item..."

Raven frowned, fiddling at the fringe of her cloak. "Mryunder hasn't entered the world yet, so it's likely there's some kind of...barrier. The item is most likely one."

"So..." Cyborg rubbed at his mouth, thinking hard. "This -- whatever -- needs some kinda object to take over the world. Like how Trigon needed you as a portal."

"Possibly."

"And that same object would protect someone against Mryunder, since they wouldn't risk destroying it." Raven nodded. "But it'd needed to be destroyed. Can't unlock a door without a key."

"Correct."

Cyborg didn't exactly do a facepalm, but there wasn't a better word for the gesture. "And it's right in Mryunder's own home."

"That's the crux of the issue, yes."

"Hang on," Robin said, "how would you destroy it, anyway? If any deity or whatever has any brain cells, then they'd make it indestructible."

Raven opened her mouth, but it was Starfire who answered, still leaning against Robin's shoulder.

"In their own home."

Everyone stared at her blankly. Starfire stared back, mildly curious.

"It is why they want to spread," she said, blinking. "Everyone knows that one castle becomes a target, but multiple ones draw the attention away. It is why a firewyrm guards the gap in their armour most carefully. It is why a self-destruct mechanism is in its own fortress, not some other place."

They still stared at her.

Starfire sighed. "I must take you all to Tamaran again sometime."

.

.

.

" -- obin."

Rough hands grabbed at his shoulders, shaking him hard.

"Robin."

The hands tightened and relaxed, as if they were hesitant. Unsure. Something soft thudded out of his sight in a distant rumble of sound. The ground was firm beneath him. Comfortable, almost. The hands had moved to his chest.

" _Breathe._ "

Fingers pressed down over his heart. They were cold, lifeless, but warmth crept from the contact. Something poisonous shifted in his gut, a building mass of anger and malice and guilt, dark and dripping like ink slathered across a wall.

The other hand rested on the side of his throat. It was a familiar touch.

The leather brushed against his neck.

"You've fought worse before, Robin. _Wake up_."

Robin jerked back into consciousness.

The sudden flood of senses made him gasp, even as light burned into his eyes. Dull, cold pain flared in every muscle and bone in his body; his limbs trembled, trying to keep it together, It felt like an entire building had collapsed on him. For several blind, frantic seconds all he saw was piercing white, his body striking out in panicked reflex --

A hand grabbed his wrist, wrenching him onto the ground.

The fog slowly lifted away. Robin heard his own breathing, sharp and broken, and swallowing felt like he had eaten glass shards whole. He closed his eyes -- he didn't even remember opening them in the first place -- and focused on a single sense, thoughts and memories dissolving into his mind like salt.

When he opened them again, Slade was crouched at his side.

They stared at each other for a few seconds. Maybe something really did break in his mind, Robin thought, as he stared up at the man. No fear, no trepidation like before -- only a mild unease, one he could almost wave off as a bout of nerves. The eye regarded him coolly. 

A faint pressure drew his attention to his wrist; Slade was still holding it, pinning it to the ground. As if he had just noticed it as well, Slade released his wrist, fingers lingering on the skin. Robin steadily pushed himself to a sitting position, his head still hazy.

Slade wouldn't talk first, Robin realised. He would be content to stay muffled in silence forever. He waited for him to ask. To speak.

Robin opened his mouth -- and a series of violent coughs tore from his throat, burning into his lungs. He doubled over, the pain in his chest spiking into white-hot needles that made tears leak from his eyes. In his periphery he thought he saw Slade lurch forward, as if to catch him, but then the coughs petered out into a rasp. Slade had moved away.

A bottle of water was pressed to his lips. Robin didn't need any verbal command; he parted his lips obligingly, and cool liquid poured down his throat, soothing out strained muscle. He drank it greedily, letting it settle deep into his stomach like a balm. 

The bottle lifted away. Robin wiped at his mouth, saliva staining the back of his hand, and tried to focus on his surroundings once more.

He was...Robin frowned, his hands bare. The gloves. The gloves Starfire had given him. They were missing. A hollow pang flared in his chest, and he tried pushing it down. His fingers were brushing something rough, yet soft.

A rug.

They were in an apartment, or what had remained of it. Two walls laid in ruins, and half of the roof was missing. Sunlight streamed in, unbroken and unfiltered; the wallpaper had decayed into a dark, grimy yellow, the windows' glass had shattered into sandlike pieces, and furniture lay in shreds all over the room. The rug had likely been a lighter colour, but age and filth had darkened it into a gloomy red, although he noted that he was lying on a cleaner patch of carpet.

The air was dry. No humidity, no salt or wetness -- they weren't near the sea anymore. The ruins of the walls still obstructed most of his vision, but he glimpsed barren earth, deadened trees -- and then a hand caught his jaw, firmly turning his head.

"We made it," Robin finally said, his voice harsh. He blinked, still unused to the light --

 _No_ \--

He reached up to touch his face.

His mask. His mask was gone. The thin shield that had guarded him from the depths of the city --

It was _gone._

"You took it off." It wasn't a question.

"You were bleeding from the eyes." Slade's hand left his jaw. "You were internally hemorrhaging as well. Your lungs couldn't hold that much water."

Robin shifted, feeling soreness seep into his tendons.

"Your heart stopped for one minute and twenty seconds."

He thought of fingers pressing into his chest, urging him to breathe. The mental image of Slade counting the seconds, hands holding his shoulders, commanding him to wake, could barely form in his head. It was unreal. It didn't make any semblance of sense.

"How am I alive?"

Slade didn't answer.

"Slade..." Where had all his fear gone? There was only a pit left in him, one that dragged and subsumed until vapours were left. "What did you do?"

"I did nothing."

A dull shock rippled through Robin. He shifted from where he sat -- his belt and cape were still there, although the latter was considerably more ragged -- and his rucksack laid in a pathetic wet heap nearby. How it even survived the island ordeal was a mystery. 

"Then how did I..."

"I'm not sure," Slade said slowly, "why you're expecting me to have all the answers."

He wasn't sure why, either. It never occurred to him that Slade might have been just as out-of-depth as he was. It never had; he had always been steps ahead, laughing softly at their attempts to catch him, melting away into the shadows whenever they cornered him. He always seemed to _know._

"What happened?"

Methodically, he was already patting himself down for his tools. His staff was gone, lost in the maelstrom of water. Robin wondered if this was how he would lose -- little things chipped away, like pebbles eroding at a mountain, until all that remained was an ashen core. The staff had just been a _staff_ , no more impressive than any other weapon --

_"A staff," he repeated when Bruce hesitated on the threshold. It wasn't different from any of the training ones he had used; plain, unadorned, slightly weighted at the tips. He swept it around, never one to control the urge to test new things._

_"I can't say that I hope you stay safe," Bruce said, smoothing out his coat. The simple motion of nervousness made something small flutter in Dick; sometimes, he forgot that Batman was still a man, one that ate and slept and grew nervous when his eldest moved out. "Villainy always happens to find people like us. And I know you're not one to stand by and do nothing."_

_Dick snorted. "Neither can you."_

_"Regardless..." Bruce met Dick's eyes. "I wish the best for you, Dick. Not just at your new home -- but anywhere. I wish..." He sighed, and stared down at the ground. "I'll miss you. We'll all miss you here."_

_"...I know." Dick collapsed the staff, already committing the weight into memory. Tonight he would walk to the jet with a single bag of luggage in hand, and when the morning came it would be on a different coast altogether. A new dawn. A new life. The feeling of tears prickled at the back of his throat, but he managed to hold it as he went to embrace the older man. The smell of Gotham always lingered on both of them, a smell of metal and smoke and restlessness, but it was the smell of home. "I'll miss you all too."_

"...my staff," he said, when Slade didn't fill in the silence. "It's gone. I lost it." He wondered why he was broadcasting it to Slade, of all people, and realised that he couldn't care less. He opened up the slots in his belt. 

His communicator was still there. The same couldn't be said for his grappling gun, or half of his birdarangs, or -- or anything, really. Another part of him lost. There were still a few flashbangs left, but all of the special utilities Cyborg had gifted him -- the tracker, the ammunition pellets...all washed into the sea.

Robin closed his eyes briefly, letting himself relax. He had fought with worse odds before. He could do this.

His hand brushed the cube.

This time he didn't shy away. He drew it out, the surface of it effortlessly gliding along his fingers. It had no shadow, not even with the sun shining directly on its planes. Robin stared at Slade, gaging his reaction.

There wasn't any. Slade had stood, looking back at him calmly. 

"I think you owe me an answer."

 _Do I?_ And he wondered when he had been able to read any of Slade's body language at all, but the unspoken answer was as clear as sunlight in the slight tensing of his shoulders. Slade didn't owe him anything. Slade didn't even grasp that concept. 

"Did you know Mryunder would be there?"

Slade had drifted to the ruined windows.

"I don't know what that is."

Robin frowned at that. In his mind's eye, he saw Slade reading through Raven's tome, eye tracking the same script he had read. 

"What does this cube do?"

"I wouldn't know."

He could be lying. Yet, somehow -- Robin rolled the cube around in his hand, the weight easing into his muscle memory. It lacked any of its fiery lustre, as dark and mysterious as an underground cavern, but it still thrummed with _something._

"You pulled me out."

Slade didn't turn. "The thing was bright enough."

It didn't explain how Slade could have found him in time several stories below, deep enough in the island to reach the sea again, or even discern any of him in the madness of the water. Or maybe it had all been in his head.

He was familiar with that, at least.

Somehow, the cube felt more potent. It was like a veil had dissipated before his eyes, dispelling the thin mist over his senses, and...Robin tensed, wondering if he should --

_Screw it._

He didn't have to see the phase to know it had happened. The sword rippled out of his hand like a flicker of pure shadow, blending seamlessly into the air. The blue rushed and roared in its own silent inferno.

"Did you know about this?"

Slade faced him partially, away from his blind side.

"Does it matter?"

"It's a _weapon._ " Robin scowled at Slade. "You're practically a walking armoury. Shouldn't you want it for yourself?"

"Should I?"

Questions with more questions. And logically, Robin knew he should toss it aside, let the cube slide down into miles and miles of mud and water, dispose of it like one would with a scrap of rubbish.

_He's not telling me something._

Robin internally scoffed; _of course_ Slade wasn't. Stating he was a secretive bastard was like observing the colour of the sky. He tested the sword instead, watching a dark core ripple into flames. 

_Maybe the sword secretly feeds off of your soul._

_Maybe it's filled with poison, and that's why Slade dropped it in your lap._

Maybe the theories sounded stupid as well, but if Robin had learned _anything_ in his tenure, it was that crazy things were the norm. He turned the hilt over, letting the blade drag across the carpet.

"I'll figure it out," he said instead, another thought creeping into his head. The cube had turned into a _sword,_ out of all weapons; it wasn't exactly out of the realm of possibility that it could change to something else. Something else less lethal; less like Slade.

More like himself.

"I would expect nothing less."

Robin's head snapped up, a strange warmth trickling into his body. Slade was still standing by the window. The one eye traced his frame, dragging the gaze from his boots the tip of his hair. Robin bit his lip, willing himself not to flush.

"Well?"

"You're not going to let me borrow your staff, aren't you?"

"You'd have to fight for it," Slade said simply. He withdrew it, placing it at his feet. "Come and get it, then."

Coldness had seeped into Robin's hands from where he held the sword. In the daylight, its blue aura made him slightly dizzy, like he was looking through a foggy lens, and maybe he could blame that haze for what he did next. Or maybe it was the restlessness growing in his stomach, one birthed from tiredness and isolation and a sharp, painful edge of losing something close, even if he didn't know it. Even if he couldn't remember it.

As if in perfect sync, Slade's katana snapped up to meet his own downswing.

"I wouldn't recommend this, Robin." Slade pretending to be kind made his voice off-kilter, like a murderer trying to mimic a nurse. "You should be healing."

"You're the one who brought me here!" He swung again, the blue blazing icily through the air, and Slade staggered back in surprise. " _You're_ the one guiding me around!"

"You seem agitated."

Memories pulsed in his skull, and he lashed out, this time with the anger he felt. Metal scraped against stone.

"What are you trying to do?"

"Don't be foolish." Slade blocked his next swing with ease. "You've revived without any sign. You've drowned, bled out, and you were infused with a psychotropic. I don't know about your timing, Robin -- "

The flash of silver brushed Robin's hair. He ducked, the weapon burning in his palms, wishing they were separate batons instead, and --

Even Slade couldn't hide his shock this time. Robin struck clean and true at the chest, force reverberating up his arm, and the sword -- the sword had _transformed._

He stared down at a pair of escrima sticks, tendrils of blue wrapping around his wrists.

_What...?_

Robin blankly looked down at the sticks. Just a moment ago they still had hefted the weight of a blade, and _somehow_ \-- through the air, in a blur of mindless desperation -- the air had simmered and split and the results lied squarely in his palms. 

"Interesting," Slade commented, the rare tone of surprise already fading back into impassivity.

_I should..._

"You don't know _anything,_ " he snapped, hands clenching around the sticks. "You don't know anything about me."

It took him a moment to realise that Slade was laughing. It was soft, one that shouldn't be as unnerving as it was, even as he stowed the katana away with a muted _click._ It was the only warning Robin saw before the man rushed at him, the fist hard and heavy.

He couldn't avoid it in time. The sudden rush of weight made his balance tip, and maybe Slade had a point -- he wasn't in any state, physical or mental, to enter this confrontation. Still, reflexes made him lash out with the sticks, cutting blue arcs in the empty, cold air --

" _Stop,_ " Slade said, a faint shadow of a snarl in his voice. Robin let out a cry of pain as the larger man twisted him stomach-first onto the ground, chest flat on the carpet. The sticks rolled to a stop a metre away. He tried to get up, but then Slade was pinning him back down, capturing his hands behind his back. Robin gathered up his strength to throw him off, to kick him, and Slade lifted his wrists upward until he gasped in pain again.

" _Desist,_ Robin." Slade's voice was _right in his ear_ and he hadn't even noticed. The room swam in a mess of black and grey blurs. "You don't even know what you're getting into."

"Let me go."

A hand pressed down hard between his shoulder blades, and his head thumped against the floorboards. 

"Prove to me that you want to live, then."

Robin's shoulders seized up in shock. " _What?_ "

"Prove to me," Slade repeated coldly, "that you have any ounce of self-preservation left."

Robin opened his mouth to -- to protest, or shout back, or say _something._ What came out was a dry rasp, more lifeless than the interior of a crypt. 

"No," he whispered.

Slade pressed down his wrists until the bones grinded together, and Robin clenched his teeth from the strain. He wouldn't scream again. He _wouldn't._

"You are an asset to me, Robin." Slade's murmur was still cold, softer and more lethal than a dagger of ice. If he had leaned any closer, Robin imagined he would feel the other man's breath against his hair. "I've made no secret of that. You are valuable, and resourceful, and intelligent on your own. I have told you this before."

"Get...get _off me_."

"We have a _partnership._ " Any lower in volume, and Robin wouldn't have heard him at all. "I like to watch you fight. I like to see you bend -- _break --_ and rebuild. But if you lose your mind like that again, I will personally dispose of your body into the sea."

Slade settled more of his weight onto him, and this time the choke that came out of Robin couldn't be wholly attributed to pain. His heart beat hard and loud in his throat.

" _Understood?"_

The thought that Slade could kill him right here, right now -- snap his neck clean and thorough, press his face down in the rug until he couldn't breathe, slide the katana neatly between his ribs -- shouldn't make his heart beat so fast. He felt sick. Nauseous. Alight. He could barely think.

"Robin."

"Yes," he muttered, and then a little louder, "Yeah. I...I did."

Slade released his wrists, and slowly stood. The weight eased from Robin's back. He rolled over, the motion sluggish, and dimly realised that his head was swimming again. Whatever effects the island had had on him, it slowly wore him away back into unconsciousness.

Something hard dropped into his vision. It was Slade's staff, the pole rolling to a halt right at his fingertips.

He let his fingers curl around the length, not daring to look Slade in the eye.

"Don't use the cube." 

And with that, Slade moved out of his vision. He didn't have the energy to follow after him, or question him on _why the hell not -- what do you know_ \-- not when exhaustion rose in a sudden, warm wave, luring him back down into its embrace.

.

.

.

Icy hands grabbed hard at his forearm, twisting the arm onto his back and up, up, _up_ \-- a sharp crack wrenched across his right shoulder blade, and it was the easiest thing in the world for Robin to sob, the sound lost in the shadows. The stairwell swam before him, dark and empty. Dark and empty as the world here was.

He didn't try to struggle. He slumped in the grip, the pain a dull, steady throb, and wished -- 

" _Stop,_ " he whispered, his heart beating slow and low in his eardrums. A dying beat. "Please stop."

Slade let him go then. He moved down a step, turning around, and -- 

A hand grabbed him by the back of his neck, pushing their mouths together.

He hadn't even registered Slade removing his mask. He couldn't exactly see the man's face in the shadows either, not when his mouth plunged onto his, a devouring, cruel entity that Robin could only submit under. _Like the tide._ It wasn't something he could push away, only reciprocate.

His back pressed into the rail. Slade had moved closer, armour pressing into his chest, knee between his thighs, and Robin could only moan softly in the kiss. It barely felt real. It couldn't be. It was just -- the knee shifted, grinding slow and hard against his crotch, and the burst of sensation made him gasp.

The kiss turned deeper; filthier, and something defiant flickered in Robin's gut. He reached up to --

_Push him away._

Bury his hands in the hair, hair he had only briefly seen before. It would be white, a roughened texture that rasped against his palms, but then Slade's mouth separated from his own. Robin didn't have time to gather his thoughts before the mouth dragged across the line of his jaw, lips brushing against his ear.

"Fight back, Robin."

Then the mouth drifted down to the column of his throat, lips pressing hard under his chin. Robin tilted his head back, and a flush of shame crept up his spine at the sounds he was making. Half a gasp, half a moan, as Slade marked and sucked at his neck, his hands slipping down to the other man's chest. Prying at the armour, trying to map out the skin beneath. To his embarrassment, he was practically grinding against Slade's leg, each movement sparking heat in his stomach, and it only made him moan louder.

Gloved hands grabbed his hips, and Robin shuddered -- then Slade pushed him down roughly onto the stairs, each edge of the steps pushing painfully into his spine and shoulders. Slade's hands rested on either side of his head, face millimetres from his own. 

He still couldn't make out his features.

"Slade -- "

The name turned into a ragged gasp as Slade lowered his head, gloved fingers ripping into his shirt. Tearing shreds off. The mouth -- cold, remorseless -- marked his chest, circling around his nipple, and at _that_ Robin panted, the little light remaining blurring into shadows and haze. His nerves felt like they were on fire. Slade's tongue circled around the nub, teeth lightly pinching at it, and he choked at the sensation. He had played with it in the privacy of his own bedroom, letting warmth and chills rush up his spine, but _here_ \-- it was different. It was overwhelming. His legs kicked out from the stimulation, anchoring Slade around his waist, pulling him closer to his own body. His hips grinded up into empty air.

"Please..." He barely knew what he was saying, even as Slade descended further down his body, teeth and tongue marking deeply into his ribs, his stomach. Lower. Lower and lower, even as heat built higher, and the only sounds he could vocalize were rough, desperate gasps. Sweat trickled down his neck. Slade's hands pried apart his legs, fingers dragging the leggings down slowly, agonizingly, and it felt like his heartbeat pounded low in his stomach. He felt like he was being sedated, his muscles loosening into pliant numbness.

And -- _and_ \--

Robin simply reached out. It felt like the easiest motion in the world to touch Slade's hair, the strands rough and abrasive between his fingers, and then the warm wet mouth descended onto his --

He woke like he was electrified, and came.

It made him boneless, like everything hard in his body had disintegrated into soft powder, and the brief rush of elation, of satisfaction, settled over his body like a warm blanket. He was trapped in it, trapped in a cloud of euphoria even as his hips twitched, unable to stop pulsing. He reached down without thought and pressed harder, his cock still throbbing in his palm, and a soft whimper escaped from his lips.

He laid there, still on the carpet, and the night reigned outside.

The rush of oxygen to his brain made him snap upright.

_No..._

And with it came --

_Everything._

_No...!_

He didn't even stop to think. He stumbled across the room, a roiling mass of panic seething and churning in his gut like a pent-up volcano, and he had to -- he _had to_ \-- there wasn't a door, but there was a window and it was the next best thing. He was leaping through it, his hands shaking hard enough that he could barely raise his arm. 

_Fuck --_

He threw up on the wasteland outside.

He hadn't eaten anything for a while. It wasn't the vomit came out that burned through him so much as the violent convulsions in his chest and throat, wringing the air out of him like a noose. He dropped to his knees, still heaving, the panic flooding into his mind. Acid burned in his mouth. 

_It was a dream. It was just a dream._

He tried to think. Tried to think of anyone, of Raven or Beast Boy or Cyborg, of Starfire flying him across the oceans. Of Bruce and Alfred, Barbara, Gordon, Lucius. Terra; Selina, the villains and criminals. Anyone that had made him happy, at ease, horrified and disgusted. Anything except what he was feeling. Red X. Poison Ivy. The Penguin. The Riddler. Two-Face. Black Mask. The panic curled into cold, sickening dread. The Joker. The silhouette that had stood near the trapezes that night, even as his parents had plummeted.

_Oh God._

He shuddered, wiping at his mouth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally somewhat-explicit! it's a wet dream and it features a sexual act between an underage person and an adult. Robin is...vaguely 17-18, since time moves weirdly in the astral plane, but here's the heads-up in case. Also, in general, manipulative stuff and a dash of fearplay. Then again, that's pretty much a given when it comes down to these two. Or anything to slade, really.
> 
> back to my ramble corner - i kid you not, sladin was like my major NOTP back in the TT03 days, and it sorta still is sometimes (dick/slade is a bit more balanced, i guess?) yet it's like watching a train wreck or an autopsy. It's so messed up but i can't tear my eyes off of it. It's fascinating. Need both more and none in my brain.
> 
> I just watched Son of Batman...like what the fuck was up with Deathstroke, or like...anything, really. *misses headshots like an asshole* *marrying Talia? what?* *loses to a ten year old?* what?
> 
> Anyways, yeah...drop a kudos/comment if you're enjoying it! Another chapter to chuck into the void.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> medical science? tf is that?

_He has a wife._

Tonight's mission barely avoided any fatalities. Slade hadn't said a word, but Robin _knew_ it was his way of punishment -- to push him closer to that threshold, to the point where lethal force would have made the robbery ten times easier. The guard before him crumpled easily enough, and guilt swarmed in him at the sound of ribs cracking.

_He's married._

He tossed the chip at Slade. The other man caught it deftly and stowed it into his pocket.

_What the hell._

The information took time to sink in. In his own room, Robin sat down heavily on the cot and watched dust settle at its foot. He needed time to think. To _process._

_What the actual hell._

The fact that someone apparently had cared for Slade didn't come as much of a surprise; there were plenty of stories of people falling in love with serial killers, even marrying them while they were in their jail cells. Hell, he had fought one close-up back in Gotham -- Harley Quinn, the shadow hanging off of the Joker's arm. Bruce himself had been fascinated by Talia al Ghul, who had left trails of bodies behind from her blade. Something about the morally dubious, the allure, made it all the more exciting. 

What came as an incomprehensible shock was that Slade had _actually cared for them back._

Whoever the woman was -- and Robin would bet all of his life savings that it had been the woman he had seen on the screen -- Slade had cared about them, by some considerable amount, enough that she was still alive and breathing. She was able to talk to him as an equal, and _live._ She wasn't afraid of him.

_This is crazy._

And not only that, but something about -- _doting mother, custody_ \-- implied a _daughter_ was in the mix as well. Robin felt like his world had flipped over. He tried to imagine Slade having a family, some kind of cosy domestic image, and came up short.

All he could think of was cold metal and colder laughs, blood and broken bones, the muted click of a gear. He couldn't imagine Slade holding a child in his arms, or walking up to a wedding altar, or _anything._

He couldn't.

_This is absolutely crazy._

Day 15. Day 16. Something would happen soon, Robin thought with a growing dread. The missions so far had been too easy. Too kind on other living beings. The wait made him restless, itching in his own skin -- sometimes he wished Slade would just burst into his room and get the fallout over with, beat him until he was unconscious.

But if there was anything he could adamantly say about Slade, it was that the man was _utterly unpredictable._

 _Wife. Child. Likely divorced._ The mission came in a single Post-It attached to the cupboard. _Stockpol Tower. Fifteenth floor. Sixth vault._ Robin dressed in his uniform, hating how the weight of the pauldrons and armour sank into his skin. _Custody battle. Doting mother._ Slade's collapsible staffs were heavier than his own, the metal more solid, but they were also able to be separated into batons. _One-and-a-half hour. Dozens of security guards._ He couldn't comprehend it. He didn't even know what Slade looked like under the mask. He tried to -- tried his damn best to picture the man cooking, ironing clothes, anything painstakingly human. It wasn't possible.

He fought his way down chrome-plated corridors. Everything about Stockpol was sleek, newly industrial, complete with scanning lasers and polished open windows. It was almost automatic, kicking and punching and knocking them unconscious. If Slade wanted him to kill, today wouldn't be the day. It wouldn't _ever_ be the day.

"Halt!"

Punch. Strike. The gun was disposed, its ammo emptied and scattered all over the ground. Let someone else pick it up. Robin twisted and kicked off from the wall, lunging at the next guard's knees. Stun baton. He wrested it out of the guard's belt and jammed it hard in his stomach, and it was only after the guard stopped convulsing, drooping into unconsciousness, that he realised the whole corridor had been cleared. Bodies lay strewn behind him, blood pooling from their skin.

_They're alive. That's all that matters._

He couldn't afford to be distracted. _Vault Six._ There was a number pad, and it took him a moment to remember the combination. He had observed the guard punching in the code from the outside. _3 - 7 - 1 - 2._

Inside was just an orb. Inside it glowed a faint purple, leaking through the orb's tiny slits in its lattice, and something uneasy stirred in Robin's gut. He held it carefully, tucking it into his belt --

**_BANG._ **

Robin crumpled.

The pain hit his brain all at once, and then the smell of blood registered in his senses -- it wasn't a spurt or a gushing fountain, just pale red rivulets trickling down his leg, but it felt like his thigh was set on fire. 

_**BANG.** _

The second bullet embedded itself into the open vault centimetres from his eye. Robin fumbled for his belt, trying to breathe slowly, calmly, even as the pain came and went in agonizing bursts. Slade had confiscated his birdarangs, and the shurikens that replaced it grazed his gloves, each sharp tine digging into his skin.

_Click._

Without even fully looking, Robin threw the shuriken at the source of the sound. 

The guard -- still half-slumped on the ground from a wound Robin had given him earlier -- collapsed back down again, gun slipping from bloody hands. Bullets rolled across the chrome. Robin gritted his teeth, trying to stand -- the bullet had only clipped his skin, avoiding any major arteries, but it hurt like _hell._ He would bleed out considerably if he didn't get aid on time. His fingers slipped as he tried to lean on the walls, his breaths shallow through his mouth.

The comm in his ear crackled to life.

Slade had been silent the entire mission, which wasn't unusual -- sometimes there was nothing to be said. Right now, however, as Robin limped his way down the corridor, he would never admit that the burst of static made a small bubble of relief settle in his chest.

"That was sloppy, Robin."

"I -- _ergh!_ \-- I got what you wanted," he gritted out, trying to muffle his gasp as his leg throbbed again. He had been through worse before. "I'm -- "

His mouth hung open, trying to close around the word _fine._ He staggered, tearing away one of his hands from the wound to brace on the wall. The hallway swam in black and white flares. His mouth was as dry as sandpaper, and everytime he tried to breathe it felt like needles were being pushed slowly into his lungs. Warm wetness trickled down his leg, his armour, all the way to his boots. Maybe the bullet had hit deeper. If it had struck an artery, he would bleed out in _minutes._

"Slade, I -- " 

That was...that was a _lot_ of blood. The world swayed around him, or maybe it was just himself, his breaths exhaling raggedly. Even with both hands pressing down, his gloves were soon soaked with blood, and it was -- his thoughts were fracturing, cracking slowly and surely into pieces, and --

He thought he heard a muffled curse somewhere, but then the cold, hard surface of the ground cracked against his head, and then he knew nothing.

.

.

.

He woke to Slade's hands slipping up his shirt.

Pure instinct gripped his arms, already swinging a punch even as his vision blurred -- and then Slade caught him, wrenching him back down on the table he laid on with enough force that he heard the bones in his wrist grind. 

"Get _off_ me!" Robin tried to shout, trying to squirm away from the touch. "Get the _hell_ off of me!"

Slade's hand clamped down _hard_ across his face, pushing his head back down on the table. Robin struggled, thrashed, but warm fingers pushed incessantly into his mouth, pinching at his tongue until he couldn't breathe -- he _couldn't breathe_ \-- 

"Try that again," Slade said coldly, "and I'll break a finger."

Robin forced himself to calm, unable to fully close his mouth. Slade's fingers slipped away; in a daze of panic and pain, he watched strands of saliva drip down to his shirt. Slade must have removed his uniform, and the mere thought of that made him shudder in nausea.

"You _bastard,_ " he muttered instead, too angry to care about backtalk.

Slade's hands returned to the hem of his shirt. Robin flinched, a cold disgust creeping up his throat -- but no, Slade simply pushed it up to his armpits. Dark bruises blossomed across his ribs and stomach.

"Cracked rib," Slade commented, prodding at the spot. Robin hissed in pain. "You must have not noticed it in regards to your other injuries."

_Other injuries..._

Robin glanced down at his leg -- _bare_ \-- and swallowed. The place where the bullet had struck him was already bandaged, the skin still swollen and tender, and it felt more numb than it was supposed to. Slade must have drugged him to keep him under. When he tried to move his leg, a flare of dulled, washed-out pain pulsed up to his hip. He felt vulnerable, only wearing boxers, the cold settling on his skin.

Slade was pressing something cold and wet along his ribs. The coolness eased the swelling a little, and against his better judgment Robin tipped his head back, closing his eyes, letting out a soft sigh. He thought Slade's hand froze for a moment, but then the ice pack shifted again, resting where it was most painful.

He wasn't sure what to say. _Thank you_ didn't apply to Slade, not since he was the one who had _sent_ him on the mission in the first place, but the silence felt uncomfortable as well. He wasn't sure what to make of the whole thing, really; he hadn't ever been so heavily injured on any other of Slade's missions, and the man himself had never checked up on his injuries. He slowly pushed himself onto his elbows as Slade moved the pack to his stomach. He stared blankly at Slade's bare hands. Large, broad muscle cording up to the knuckles -- and, he realised with surprise, no callouses. The skin was smooth, like a baby's hand. No scars; nothing that indicated he ever held a gun or a sword, despite the fact that he definitely did.

Robin swallowed, his face heating slightly. 

"What was the orb for?" It was the last question he had on his mind, but it felt like the safest to ask. At the very least, Slade wouldn't backhand him back onto the table.

"Fuel source." Slade stepped away, withdrawing the pack, and some small part of Robin missed the touch. The other parts quickly crushed it down mercilessly. 

"For what? Some kind of doomsday weapon?"

"I wouldn't know," Slade replied shortly, returning with something in his hand. This time Robin reined in his flinch as Slade held it up to the light -- a plastic bottle of water, the price tag still attached to its wrap. Without a word he pushed it into Robin's hands.

_This is so weird._

The water refreshed his mouth and throat. He drank it slowly, uncomfortably aware of Slade's eye never leaving his face. Slowly, he manoeuvred himself into a sitting position, wincing as the dull pain throbbed all over his body, letting his legs dangle over the table's sides. He wondered if Slade would berate him, or confine him into the room.

 _The woman,_ he realised, his mouth going dry despite the water. She was the metaphorical elephant in the room; an invisible presence, daring him to ask. Slade had turned around, slowly wiping at an empty syringe, and Robin watched him pack away the medical items with a quick, subdued efficiency, putting his bulky gloves back on. 

"Your hands," Robin managed, fingers tight around the bottle. 

Slade turned.

"There's no callouses on them." Even he had his own, gripping his staff or batons or his grappling gun. Every person in their line of work had layers and layers of scars; some visible, others less obvious. There would always be one from the night his parents had fallen. "And..."

Maybe it was whatever Slade had drugged him with, but his tongue felt thicker and looser than before. Words, broken and halting, spilled from his lips. It didn't feel like himself talking. 

"The woman on the screen." Instantly he _felt_ the atmosphere of the room change -- before, it had at least been controlled, almost muted, but now it felt like electric wires ran along its walls. Slade had drifted closer, and Robin felt the customary prickle of fear rise in his throat. He held the bottle closer to his chest, as if it was any kind of defence.

"What about her?"

Slade knew he knew. There was a glint in his eye, a slight tilt to his head, like feeding a starved lion inches from the fence. Curiosity and common sense battled inside Robin in a thick, viscous stew of feelings, each making his hands shake minutely as he lowered the bottle.

"I," he began -- and then gasped as Slade's hand clamped over his leg, right where he had been shot. White-hot pain sheared into his mind, making him bite back a scream even as the bottle rolled from his fingers, splattering all over the floor. Tears leaked from his eyes.

" _Don't_ \-- "

"You've already had a brush with death earlier, Robin." Slade's hand relaxed on his wound, but it didn't pull away. "If you want answers, all you have to do is ask."

There was only a split-second of relief before metal fingers _pushed_ into his wound.

At that, Robin couldn't hold back his scream -- his body contorted like it was electrified, even as his other fist slammed hard into the surface of the table. He tried to pry the fingers out, a mindless rush of agony immovable against cold solid gloves, Slade pushing further and deeper as his cries grew in volume. He couldn't slide off the table either, not with the way his leg was shaking and paling. Blood had started to stain the bandages.

"I met her in the military," Slade continued, as if he wasn't practically clawing out Robin's nerves. "A soldier for most of my life. You'd understand, wouldn't you?"

With a snarl, Robin wrenched Slade's fingers out of his wound, not quite holding back the gasp of pain as bloody trails crept down his leg. 

"You're not a soldier," he hissed out, his entire leg throbbing with pain. "You're -- you're a psychopath. I don't even understand -- "

_Don't say it. Don't SAY it._

" -- how anyone could get close to you."

Casually, as if he was lighting a match, Slade reached over and snapped his pinky.

Robin had had his fair share of broken bones, but the sheer _suddenness_ \-- the simple, casual cruelty of the action -- made him double over, hard, cupping at the finger. He opened his mouth to gasp, to fire another insult, but his tongue stilled when he saw Slade wiping nonchalantly at his gloves.

There were bloodstains over it; not from Robin's wound, but older. Several hours fresh. Brown-red, rusty, coating the fabric and metal from finger to palm. The dual pain of his leg and finger made Robin choke on nothing; fury rose in him, hot and bubbling like tar, but the paralysing cold of fear locked his limbs. 

" _You_ \-- "

"I killed the guard who shot you," Slade said simply, rising to his feet. Robin shrank back, still cupping the finger. "I wrung his neck."

And with that he left the room, the silence trailing behind hollow and lifeless.

.

.

.

_Don't look at him._

Robin hadn't slept for the remainder of the night. Every time his body dared to relax, to lower his guard, the dream came back with a stinging vengeance -- sharp, twisting pain, the hot bubble of arousal. How fear had so quickly morphed into a terrible, gnawing desire, a secret forbidden and filthy and _plain wrong._

He wasn't supposed to -- _it was a dream,_ he told himself, watching the sun slant into the room. Slade, to his massive relief, hadn't been anywhere nearby. He had thrown up more on the ground, his stomach still twitching after, reflexively clenching on thin air. Food didn't seem to matter much, but the emptiness still seared in his guts. 

_Just a dream._

It didn't mean anything. When he was younger he had had some rather inappropriate reactions whenever Bruce had wrestled him onto the ground, and to his eternal gratitude Bruce never brought it up. Hell, he had even dreamed of _Beast Boy_ before, a weird dream that had ended up with both of them shirtless in a tub of lard. Dreams were just that; random, broken images mashed together, fading away under the sunlight.

He thought of the warmth he had felt, the slow, steady pulse that made his toes curl, and shuddered.

Slade came back by dawn. It hadn't occurred to Robin that the man might have left, might have abandoned him now that they had reached the mountain, and the thought only reared its ugly head when he saw his silhouette appear near the windows. Robin tried his best not to look his way.

_It didn't mean anything._

Because if it did...he didn't what it said about him. That he had dreamed of submitting to a monster, letting them take him apart, and enjoying each second. Letting someone who had tortured him and his friends _touch_ him. Letting them take their fill.

 _Is this what Batman feels?_ That was hardly a reliable metric; Selina might have been on the wrong side of the law, but she wasn't a mass-murderer or a terrorist or the once-herald of _Hell._ She still had morals, a heart. She was still _human._

It wasn't something Robin could describe Slade with in any terms. Even now, as he nibbled on a handful of trail mix as they walked along a small dirt trail -- he couldn't even fathom how his brain had pieced it together. Fear was what he had always felt around Slade, back in the day. Over the years it had ebbed into a nervous trepidation, a bubbling uneasiness, before easing into a distant hostility, but --

 _Fascination,_ his mind supplied for him. _You're fascinated by him. He's different from your other villains. He doesn't operate by any code but his own._

His stomach tightened in repulsion. Robin took a deep breath, trying to escape his thoughts, his rucksack clinging rather pathetically onto his back.

The mountainside had been different from what he had expected. At a distance it was a shrouded enigma, one that evoked a boding for fireblazed land and scorched streaks of Earth -- yet it was only deadened land. Caves and other rock formations puckered the ground, the rock shiny and hard at some places and soft, crumbling material at the others. The ground sloped upward, but only at a degree barely noticeable. When he glanced up, all he saw were layers and layers of grey-brown rock, occasionally with black brambles oozing out from the cracks. The smell of decay had lessened considerably, but the dryness of the air wasn't much better. It was similar to what he had smelled back at the cellar. The sky had grown bizarre as well -- the colours were messier, like paint randomly mixed in a barrel, a harsh streak of red splitting into weak, pale grey that darkened near what passed for a horizon.

Robin shivered, clutching his tattered cloak about him.

And most alarmingly -- _roamers._ There were a lot of them now, silently watching Robin and Slade climb the mountainside, preferring to lurk in the depths of the shadows. Crouched bodies slumped over the ground, hands absentmindedly scratching at the dirt -- one of them, awfully human, had let out a soft, small whimper as they passed by. Other than that they were soundless -- they didn't appear to breathe, or even blink, their hands dragging along the stone.

"They're following us," Robin bit out well into their trail. Without urban architecture or landscape to distract him, he was painfully aware of Slade's presence a few metres off, blending into the shadows of rock cuts. Only wind scratched at the surface. Robin shifted uncomfortably, trying to ignore the slight prickling feeling in his gut that something --

_Something's off._

He glanced back. The trail disappeared into a haze of dust, the blurry silhouettes of roamers scuttling off to the sidelines. Their eyes glittered dimly, like dying stars.

He thought of the crazed horde in the cave, of the tethers cut in two.

_Something's wrong._

He couldn't exactly identify it, but it was _there._ It built low and cold in his stomach, a rising pit of ice, and he casually laid a hand on the staff. The staff Slade had given him. His pulse was picking up, struggling to remain steady.

_Don't use the cube._

What did Slade know? It was more obvious than anything that the other man knew much more than he was letting on, yet at the same time -- 

_I don't know what that is_ \-- 

_There's a reason behind everything._ Robin took a calming breath, feeling the cape cling to his body. 

Slade didn't want him dead. He could be assured of that; despite his threat, Robin had so far had not been waken up with a katana skewered through his stomach. Slade didn't ever really want him dead, he realised -- simply beaten and defeated, crushed into dust. Under his boot. Begging for him to stop.

 _Does he want me to be dependent on him?_ That made more sense, but it didn't explain why he'd give him the staff. Robin was already familiarising with the weight, letting his fingers flex around the shaft. 

_An ounce of self-preservation,_ Slade had hissed in his ear.

If Robin ever had any, he wouldn't be travelling with him. 

A slow, hissing sound rasped from the silhouettes behind.

Slade had been walking behind him. Robin turned slightly, not comfortable with how exposed his back was, his hand tightening the grip on the staff. Strangely enough, none of the roamers reacted as Slade drew near a cluster of them. He bent to inspect a boulder. 

The hairs on Robin's neck stood.

Slade scraped a single, gloved finger across the ridges and bumps, inspecting it closely. The sun angled across his armour, but there was little reflection -- somehow the lights grew more muted, deepening into dark, bruise-like shadows across the stony ground. More of the dust had rose, filling the air like smoke. Everything seemed to be suspended, caught in stasis, and the feeling -- of a dark, throbbing restlessness -- felt so _familiar._ The same restlessness that hung at the edge of his mind, sharpening his nightmares into vivid recollections.

"...Slade," he croaked how, not trusting his voice. He hated how trembling and weak it sounded. "Something's off."

Slade straightened, still peering at his finger.

"Slade?"

"Interesting," Slade murmured, almost to himself. Robin flinched away as Slade walked near him, but the other man only continued up the trail. Robin glanced back again; the roamers turned their gaze to him, their mouths hanging slightly open. 

_They've been staring at me the whole time._

Feeling like he was trapped in a tiger's pen, Robin slowly -- _so_ damn slowly -- turned back around, feeling their stares claw into his back. He imagined their mouths, wide and gaping like the vision in the island had been, a corpse playing ragdoll as a hollow shell. 

"Robin."

"What do you know?" Robin bit out, fighting to keep his voice down to a whisper.

True to expectations, Slade didn't give him an answer. The trail winded up and up, and the revenants kept following, never lurking near, but never hurrying off either. The dust only darkened as the sun began to set. It hadn't been there in the morning, but now it resembled a thickening wall of mist, coils dragging against the ground. A shelf of rock loomed close, a large hollow carved at its west side. Slade had easily climbed up to its lip, gesturing Robin to follow.

Robin scowled at him, but complied. Slade was already pulling several items from his own utility belt; his fingers worked quickly and efficiently, slipping in and out of pockets. Metal scraps. What looked like a corkscrew. A small circular item.

"What -- ?"

"Stay still, Robin, or you'll miss it."

"Miss _what_?"

"Keep an eye on the trail."

Robin frowned, but he glanced back at the trail -- and almost fell off the edge. The sun was low, lower than a dying flame, and it could have been a trick of the eye --

_that -- that wasn't --_

He rubbed at his eyes, squinting harder.

Nothing. Nothing but mist and the outlines of roamers, still lingering at the radius of distance. Still rocks and brambles and a darkening sky. Maybe it was just his paranoia. There weren't any odd footsteps, not that he would hear them over the muted chaos of the roamers. Next to him, Slade was still arranging his items, putting them in and out of various pockets, setting some on the ground.

"What's going on?"

"Someone's following you."

The suddenness of the statement made Robin suck in a sharp breath, cold flooding into his veins. 

" _What?_ "

"Someone's been following you since we arrived on this mountain." Slade's voice was as emotionless as ever. "There were prints outside the ruins. Substance on the stones. They're not covering their tracks well."

Robin tried not to let dread show on his face. "Did you...did you see them?"

Slade shook his head. 

No one came up the trail. Robin fished through the events of the day -- they had just been walking, occasionally pausing for Robin to take a break, the roamers continuously following -- but he couldn't recall any figure or silhouette trailing them. _Substance._ Maybe it was weaponry, or chemicals, or...

Something nagged in his head.

"Wait here," Slade said suddenly, brushing dust off of his armour. A hand settled on Robin's shoulder, squeezing it briefly, and in shame Robin felt warmth seep through the base of his spine. The sun had disappeared by now; Slade had become a shadow, not unlike the one in his dreams. Robin decisively crushed that memory away. Slade crawled back down the shelf of rock, the sounds of metal scraping against stone fading into silence. 

Robin sat there, alone, his ears straining for sound. The only ones were of his own breathing, low and shallow. He couldn't count how many times he had served as patrol, perched on Gotham's gargoyles and gazing down at the lights and yawning streets beneath. Sometimes it had been a game, seeing how close he could perch to the edge, madly feeling the wind rush under his feet. Whatever Gotham was, it was a city of life and sound -- even if it bordered on a constant nightmare -- but here, he could only catch the contours of stone.

_Snap._

Robin froze.

Maybe it was Slade. Maybe it was just a roamer.

His hands shaking slightly, Robin drew out the staff.

It was the same feeling that settled over him back at the island; the same, growing dread, one that threatened to consume his veins and limbs. He bit his lip, trying to draw calmness from the slight feeling of pain. 

_snp_

The cube at his belt flared in a deathly glow.

Robin barely had time to leap up before it _crashed_ into him, a sudden force that knocked him clean off his feet. He somersaulted back, rock cutting into his bare hands. The shadows swarmed around him. The air felt cold, crystalline, his breaths coming out in icy mists, but it didn't deter his movements. Even as his stomach throbbed in pain, Robin _moved_ \-- cold air whipping in his face -- sweeping out his staff in a broad, swift stroke.

A figure stood at the edge; it was small, smaller than him, but as he swept out his staff it easily ducked to the side.

Robin lunged, jabbing the staff -- only the cube's light guided him, weak and unsteady -- and the _knife_ tore through empty air. He was practically fighting blind; rock scraped against metal, and he lashed out a kick at the figure's legs. Boot connected with armour.

The figure never made a sound -- a gloved hand flashed out, and the blade cut _hard_ into Robin's shoulder.

This time he couldn't hold back a sound of pain, not when the cold continued to close around his throat. He slammed the end of the pole into the figure's stomach, cracking them into batons. The figure glanced up, hands still holding a knife --

The mask. The same one as the people who had attacked him -- the same one in Raven's tome --

Robin struck once, twice, the third blow catching the figure directly on the chin.

They didn't hesitate. The knife flashed by -- Robin threw himself to the side, the metal damn near nicking his ear -- and then he _soared._ He had only ever jumped so viciously when training with Slade, but anger pulsed in him, anger and loss and every other negative emotion that had festered in him like a rotting corpse. 

His boot landed squarely on the figure's chest.

For a single moment the figure almost seemed to float, the impact rippling through their body like water through sand, and then they were staggering back, breaths harsh and heavy, exactly where Slade had laid his items --

Electricity flared up in bright, piercing tendrils.

It was like watching an animal struggling to escape a trap. The figure thrashed violently, convulsively, arms and legs locking up like they were made of metal joints. And then -- a sound. A groan. It was a sound of pain, low and forced, but it was there.

Robin didn't stop to think. The figure convulsed again, back arching as they spasmed onto their knees, and he was trying to drag them away -- biting back his own shout as his hands buzzed -- and there, along the figure's neck, was a thin red line of blood. 

_They're bleeding from the mouth._

A muffled shout ripped from behind the mask. 

A fist punched hard into Robin's stomach; he choked, his grip slackening, and the masker twisted away from his hands. Hands clawed desperately at whatever traps Slade had put on the ground, even as their body continued to shake from the current, and Robin thought he could _hear_ bones grinding together.

Metal flashed in their hand.

The figure lunged -- aim desperate, moans of pain audible behind the mask -- and this time Robin couldn't get his staff up in time. The other knife slashed wide across his forearm, droplets of blood disappearing into the night. How they were still able to stand, let alone _fight,_ despite all the voltage was staggering. Robin ducked the next slash, gritting his teeth against the pain.

The figure rushed at him.

They never reached him.

Out of absolutely _nowhere_ , Slade swept in, the single kick he landed on the figure sending them sprawling by several metres. Robin winced as he heard them land on solid rock.

Slade strode forward, casually unsheathing his sword. Robin's breath caught in his throat.

"You used me as _bait._ "

"It was effective enough." The figure was struggling to stand up, and Slade let the tip of the katana drag across the ground. "Don't get so worked up over it, Robin."

Robin straightened, clenching his jaw. "Maybe you could have _told me._ "

"I could have, yes."

Slade slammed his blade down into the figure's foot.

Robin instinctively lurched forward, horror closing around his heart, even as the figure threw their head back and _screamed._

The sound tore through the air like shrapnel. _No, no,_ no -- blood pooled around the toes, even as they twitched and jerked, futilely trying to dislodge the blade. Their chest heaved in and out desperately. Slade had bent down, fingers clamping around the neck.

"Slade, _stop!_ "

"I don't recall you saying that the last time."

"That's -- " _T_ _hat's different._ "They're already _down,_ Slade! They can't fight back anymore!"

"They're still a threat." Slade pushed them down harder, the grip relentless even as they let out a cry of pain. "Do you really think they'll let you go? They'll hunt you until they can catch you, and there won't be anything left of you to bury."

"Let them _go._ "

Slade gazed up at Robin, his eye calm. Robin's pulse had skyrocketed; the world seemed to buzz in his ears, his stance unsteady, a trail of blood still dripping down his arm. He wasn't aware of how tightly he was clenching his fist until his fingernails dug deep into his palms. 

"... _stop._ "

The figure had stopped fighting against Slade's grip, their form limp on the ground. Still, the voice was as clear as glass.

"I..." A ragged sob clung on their words. It took a moment for Robin to realise they were crying, breaths shuddering in and out, tears leaking from the edge of the mask. The voice was less harsh now, softer and more vulnerable. A kid's voice.

"I didn't mean to," they were whispering, their voice shaky. Slade still didn't let up. "I'm -- I'm _sorry_ , please don't -- "

Robin darted forward, his heart twisting. He pried Slade's grasp off of the figure's neck. 

To his light surprise, Slade immediately released.

"I'm sorry," they still pleaded, now curled on the ground. Carefully, Robin drew the sword out of their foot, his stomach twisting at the shadowed sight of blood staining the shoe and ground. He tore a piece of his shirt off, doing his best to bandage the wound. The fabric was instantly drenched in red. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -- they _made_ me -- they -- " Another choked sob came out, raw and torn as bleeding muscle.

"Hey," Robin whispered to them, his hands trembling. The anger had dissipated. His fingers slowly peeled away the mask from the face, and he found himself staring at the face of a boy his age, the face smeared with sweat and blood and tears. The boy's eyes were dark, shimmering, light brown hair matted in blood. A ragged scar cut down from his temple to his jaw, deep and gouged, and he sucked in loud, wet breaths.

 _God, he's just a kid._ And Slade had been ready to -- ready _to_ \--

"Hey. Hey," he moved to settle his hands on the boy's shoulders. The other boy still hadn't stopped sobbing, tears and snot trailing down his face. "Hey, it's alright, okay? Everything's alright. Everything will be fine. You're fine. You're safe."

The boy sobbed, hiccoughed, a low whimper slipping from his mouth.

"It's okay," Robin managed, trying to comfort him, even if he couldn't exactly believe in his own words. Not while Slade stood behind him silently, the armoured gloves still speckled in blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robin is probably stealing something like the power stone from GoTG in the beginning, because why not
> 
> Hi! So this is approximately where Part II of the story begins. The first part moved a lot slower than I wanted, but it was mostly setting up the world and a few other Chekhov guns. And so far Robin and Slade don't exactly have a real conflict -- there's no other people or characters around, and not much is a threat to them combined.
> 
> bUUUUT...that, like, completely changes come part 2. the big thing about Robin and Slade isn't just that slade tortured robin & co because he was a raging psycho, it's also their completely different moral philosophies. Robin doesn't kill; Slade does. Right now there hasn't been human contact (except for a case of self-defence) and so these philosophies haven't clashed, but it's gonna come up in major ways later. And when I mean major, I mean like the next chapter.
> 
> okay i think i was a bit high writing this
> 
> Anyways, please don't forget to drop a kudos/comment if you're enjoying the story! I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.


	11. Chapter 11

He didn't know how much time had passed. The night moved slowly, easing into the first hints of dawn, and still Robin knelt before the boy. When he had reached out to pat him, to reassure him, the boy had only withdrawn into himself more. Robin settled for sitting next to him instead. Somewhere in the minutes and hours, Slade had drawn off, disappearing among the stone, and Robin didn't have the energy or will to go looking.

The cuts from the knife stung lightly. Robin had tried bandaging up the boy's foot further, but the boy had hissed and shook his head ferociously, and miraculously enough the bleeding had seemed to slow down to a mild trickle. Judging by his pose, he had had more than his fair share of cuts and injuries, and it made something cold and hard flare inside Robin's stomach. Sure, his training with Bruce hadn't exactly been cakewalk, but the way the boy shied away from him -- the way wariness and fear made his eyes darken like pools of ink -- made Robin's hair stand on edge. 

As the horizon swelled in a pocket of gold, the boy shifted in his spot, hands picking at the frayed edges of pants. His fingers were long, the bones crooked, and Robin had the vivid image of the finger being broken casually, like snapping a matchstick. A phantom pain thrummed in his own pinky, but he shook it off. He had experienced broken fingers before. It was nothing new.

"...water," the boy said, the softness of his voice a far cry from the desperate panic of before.

Robin was already nodding before he even registered the words. Too late he remembered that rations were on the lower end, especially on the mountainside, but he wasn't going to refuse aid to someone who looked like a starved skeleton. 

"Alright." Robin pitched his voice as kindly as he could, feeling a bit like he was trying to soothe an animal. "Just stay here, alright? I'll be right back."

He stood, grimacing at how stiffed and cramped his legs felt, before hobbling over to his rucksack. He had placed it in between a set of lumpy boulders, half-concealed by a low wall of dark stone, and there was a bit of a struggle on wresting it out of its space. The water was tepid, like bathwater long gone cool, but he didn't exactly have a plethora of options either. The boy's head snapped up as he returned, carefully setting the water a foot away or so and sitting back down on the ground.

"It's a little warm," he tried to explain when the boy stared at the bottle. "I don't know how fresh it is, either, but..." he drifted off, the words like sandpaper blocks on his tongue. "It's what I have for now."

Slowly, a shaking hand settled around the bottle. The boy uncapped it carefully, as if he couldn't bear to spill a single drop, his face filled with childlike wonder. The scar glinted in the light, and Robin's stomach clenched at the sight. It was ragged, as if it had been slashed open by a knife.

 _Not combat,_ he thought. He would know. _It was deliberate._

The boy took small, careful sips, occasionally making a wheezing noise through his nostrils as he drank the water. At around one-third of the bottle, he closed it again, holding it close to his chest. 

"I'm -- I'm Aidan."

The quiet utterance of his name snapped Robin out of his thoughts.

"Aidan. Okay." Starfire would know what to do, Robin thought wistfully; she would simply gather the other boy in her arms, let him be buried in a mass of red hair and strong arms, but he wasn't Starfire. He could only put on a smile, one that he barely felt was real. "That's nice to know."

 _God,_ he was terrible at this.

"I'm Robin," he offered, trying and failing not to wince at his own words. Aidan stared up at him, eyes wide and unreadable. "I'm....sorry. I'm not really good with this."

Aidan didn't immediately speak.

"You've -- you've been kind to me." Aidan blinked up at Robin, droplets of water still dripping down his chin. "I tried to kill you."

"Are you still trying to?"

Aidan shook his head.

"Then that's a good enough reason for me." This time it felt easier to smile. "A lot of times, people are forced to do what they don't want to. I'm not one to judge."

Aidan swallowed, glancing back at Robin.

"My foot -- "

It felt like a pit had opened in Robin's stomach. Instantly he darted over, panic seizing his veins, but Aidan was already shaking his head. Robin paused, hands frozen. 

"No, it's just..." Aidan fished around for words. "You don't have to...to worry about it. I can heal."

 _A metahuman._ "Still, you've bled a lot. I can wrap it up more."

"It's fine." When Robin reached for the foot, Aidan jerked away, and Robin instantly shifted back. Aidan's voice had cracked on the last word. "It's _fine._ "

"I've known people with healing factors before," Robin said gently. "It doesn't always perfectly heal up without help." The words felt stiff and awkward on his tongue, but he wasn't sure _what_ to say. "It'll make the pain a little bit less, at least."

Aidan paused, fingers digging hard into his knees. 

"...okay," he whispered.

Robin bandaged the ruin of Aidan's foot -- it was already healing, the skin slowly stitching back up -- with a deft efficiency that had been trained into him since childhood. Even before Batman had come along, his parents had walked him through the rudimentary gestures of treating burns, sprains, popped joints; it was something Alfred had been more than happy to continue teaching him. He tied it slowly, careful not to jostle the foot.

"Thank you," Aidan said quietly, his voice coming out as a croak. "You didn't hurt me, anyway."

"I'm pretty sure I hit you with the staff a few times," Robin replied, trying to lighten his tone as he tightened the last knot.

"No -- the foot. That wasn't you." Aidan wiped at his face.

Robin's hands stilled. He thought of Slade so casually stabbing into the foot, the blade going through flesh like a knife through soft dough, gazing up at Robin with the detachment of someone watching rain fall. 

"I'm..." _I'm sorry?_ That didn't negate the action. It wasn't like Slade was under his power or responsibility, anyway, yet somehow he felt compelled to apologise. Maybe it was because it was all he could do. "I'm sorry about that. He's -- " _A psychotic murderer_ came into mind, the words bright and burning as neon signs, but that probably wouldn't assuage Aidan's worries at all. 

"He was a soldier," Robin settled on instead, and even if it wasn't exactly false it still felt like a lie. Slade hadn't stabbed because of any military influence or training; he stabbed because Aidan had been a threat, no matter how small, and Slade ground out threats until they were scattered into dust. "He -- he fought a lot, I guess."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Robin patted at Aidan's foot, the bandages already beginning to soak. _He's not going to hurt you_ rose in his throat, but Robin bit back on the words at the last second. That was only a false promise; he couldn't _make_ Slade do anything. Aidan must have sensed that, since his eyes crinkled like he was tightening his jaw. Robin observed him a little -- the irises had appeared black at first, like pools of ink, but now in the growing light he could discern grey and blue tumbling towards the centre, as if the colours were disjointed puzzles. There was no pupil either.

"I'm going to go search around," he said instead, not sure why goosebumps crawled up his arms. "You're free to leave, if you want, but you can also stay. It's up to you." Up to Slade, rather, but Robin couldn't make himself say it. Maybe it was some inner part of him that didn't dare to acknowledge how much power Slade still had over him, just like back in the days when they'd fought.

"I'll stay," Aidan muttered, wincing slightly as he moved his foot gingerly.

"Alright. Okay." Robin plastered on a grin, one that felt like he was dragging a stick through mud. "I'll be back soon, then."

Slade had returned from wherever he had been. Robin found him sitting at the stone wall, armoured legs dangling off the cliff edge, even as he picked up the rucksack from where it was laid. At his approaching footsteps, Slade stowed something away into his belt, the motion too deft and quick for Robin to glimpse properly.

"How's your new companion coming along?"

"Considering you just tried to _kill_ him --" Robin snapped, and grimaced at how loud his voice was. He lowered his voice. "I don't think you have really any valid points."

"You trust too easily."

"It's not _trust._ It's just basic decency." Robin couldn't but throw in -- "something _you_ don't have."

Slade stared back at him.

Feeling like he had been scolded for something, Robin scowled and stared at his feet. Lecturing criminals wasn't really his thing -- not when his original gig had been shorts and pixie boots -- and the irony of trying to give one to someone who had a kill count that high was not lost on him. 

"I don't know if you can read body language, Robin," Slade said softly, "but your newfound _friend_ isn't telling the truth. He's hiding from you."

"I'm not gonna make him give up his personal baggage if he doesn't want to."

"Even if it risked both of our lives?"

If it was anyone else, Robin would have rolled his eyes. "You have a healing factor. You'll be fine."

For once, miraculously, Slade didn't try to goad the issue. Instead, he straightened, brushing off dust from his gauntleted forearms. For some reason Robin swallowed at the gesture.

"And yourself? You can heal up as well?"

"I've fought more dangerous people before." The _like you_ was unspoken, but by the way Slade's eye tightened Robin knew the words had might as well been. He expected Slade to retort, to casually brush off Robin's claims, but instead -- 

"You've been averse to me."

Robin opened his mouth to protest, or even a _what did you expect?_ but Slade kept speaking. "Even more so. Ever since you woke from the mountain."

"What, you're surprised?"

"Intrigued." Slade's hand flashed out, and Robin braced for impact -- but it was only his hand brushing along Robin's shoulder, tracing a path to his collarbone, before drawing away. The touch was so light and quick that it might have been on accident. Robin flushed, forcing himself to stay still. To stay unaffected. "Like this. You're reacting to me."

 _When have I not?_ They were standing too close. A few more centrimetres closer, and it would just be like Robin's dream. He swallowed again, feeling his heart beat a little faster, wondering how much Slade knew. Their eyes met. Slade's gaze was unreadable, but Robin had the sense that the other man was evaluating him, trying to pry apart into his very mind.

"That's..." he began, feeling like he had eaten sand, "that's not any of your business." 

"If it concerns me, it is." Slade tilted his head. "I can hear your heartrate, you know."

_Shit._

"Again," Robin said, anger instantly rising in him defensively. Anger was better than shame, or the restless, gnawing _need_ that fluttered in his stomach. "It's none of your business."

Slade shifted -- and for a moment, Robin flinched back, old untouched memories immediately easing into his bones and muscles, but Slade was only resting his fingers on the side of Robin's neck. The fingers were cold, metal, with no trace of vitality, but Robin's face warmed.

"Like this," Slade said, his voice soft enough to be a threat. "It's increasing. It's unsteady."

Robin wrenched his hand off, ignoring how his heart followed Slade's words. If Slade knew, if he had any _inkling_ of what Robin had thought...it would be a disaster. It would be an utter nightmare.

And yet, some part of him -- some small, repressed part that never grew, never expanded, but he could never get rid of -- urged him to -- _to_ \--

_Let his hand stay there? Let him touch you more?_

Robin turned away, all too aware of Slade's eye digging into his spine. Slade's soft laughter rang in his ears even as he made his way back to Aidan, who was now sloshing the water around in the bottle and staring at it like it held the secret of the universe. To his relief, Aidan didn't jump or flinch away when Robin carefully sat back down next to him. He supposed it was an improvement.

"How's your foot doing?"

Aidan stirred. "It's hurting less. I think."

"I'm glad to hear that." And he was -- to not see the other boy's face scrunch up in pain, or to hear the shallowness of his breaths. Symptoms of pain would never be new or novel to Robin, but he sometimes wished they were. "Do you want any food?"

"...no." Aidan wrapped his arms around his knees, wincing slightly as he dragged his foot closer."I mean..." he shot a worried look at Robin. "Maybe later? I don't think I can hold down anything for long."

 _Damn it._ "Was the water too -- "

"No, no," Aidan said hurriedly, "it's just...I haven't had so much in my stomach before."

Robin squashed down his anger. He couldn't exactly put his finger on where it had came from, or where it was directed to, but it licked up his chest in painful spikes, and he had the urge to punch the dirt over and over. Instea, he breathed out slowly, trying not to give away any hint of his emotions. Bruce had perfected that easily, but it had always been difficult for him, to bottle up _everything_ and hide it behind a mask of...

Robin breathed in and out again.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Aidan," he said, his voice relatively stable. 

Aidan stared blankly down at the bottle, chin tucked on a knee. "It's -- it wasn't easy, I guess." He shot another look. "You're probably wondering why I, um, came after you."

It took Robin some amount of time before he settled for the truth. "I can't say it hasn't crossed my mind."

"Mom didn't tell me either." _Mom._ Robin filed that fact away. The word had slipped out of Aidan's mouth easily enough. "But I think you...you have something, and they want it. That's all I know."

Robin frowned at that. His gear was useful, sure, but he couldn't imagine a whole group of people coordinating series of attacks just for something that'd easily break in the wrong hands. And after the whole island scene, most of his stuff was gone as well. He went through a mental checklist quickly: birdarangs, grapple, staff, communicator, cape...

_The cube._

Robin looked at Aidan carefully. Aidan was still staring at the water, somewhat absentmindedly watching the drops slide down the surface, but the words echoed in his head like his brain was an empty chamber. 

Aidan must have seen it when they fought. It was hard to miss; a bright, unearthly blue that rippled into the night like an LED blot on blackscreen, but...Robin bit his lip, trying to pass off the lull in silence as a simple breath.

 _There's no reason to specifically mention_ _it._

He's hiding from you, Slade had said, as casually as if he was observing the colour of the ground. 

"I see," Robin opted for, and he didn't miss how Aidan shifted ever so slightly -- and not from the pain of the foot. _Why wouldn't the maskers just kill me, then?_ _They could have cut my throat while they slept._ "I guess that makes sense, considering resources and all."

Aidan opened his mouth as if to refute something -- and maybe Slade had somewhat of a point on body language, but Robin knew evasion when he saw one. It was the same language Raven had emitted, after he had chased after her in the hallways. The same subtle wince, like they were trying to dodge an invisible force. 

"I guess so," Aidan repeated, glancing back at Robin. 

Robin was distinctly aware of the cube resting on his belt; it felt like a sack of stones, even if it was mostly obscured by the pockets. Somehow he had the impression that Slade was watching all of this unfold with the amusement of a child frying an ant under a magnifying glass. He needed to turn away the topic. 

"So," he began unsteadily, "how long have you been with them?"

Aidan huddled tighter around himself. "I...I can't remember. They always drugged me. They kept feeding me things. Mom always said it made me stronger."

Instantly Robin felt guilt again. It wasn't Aidan's fault that he didn't want to talk much, not when whatever he had gone through felt like a nightmare. He tried to imagine Bruce raising him the way Aidan's mother must have. Goosebumps rippled across his skin.

"You don't have to answer," he said automatically, hating how Aidan made a tiny, whimpering sound. Aidan's shoulders slumped infinitesimally. "You...you don't have to feel obligated to answer anything if you don't want to."

Aidan raised his head, his eyes dry.

"What if he asks me?"

"Hm?"

Aidan jerked his head. "What about your -- " he fished around for the word, face tight. "Partner," he finally settled on, even as Robin internally flinched from the term. It sounded too much like there was some sort of actual parity between him and Slade, some sort of actual balance, when in reality Slade could leave him for dead as easily as cracking open an egg. 

Still, adding onto Aidan's burdens was probably the last thing that ever needed to be done. Robin hesitated, wondering what he should say.

"I don't think it'll come to that," he said slowly, wondering if Slade was watching them right now. Listening to them. Mocking at Robin's willingness to trust, to believe, to even hope that he had the smallest chance of fending Slade off.

Aidan released a slight, shaky breath, a motion so subtle that Robin might not have noticed it at all. "Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here comes an OC character. He has a purpose in this fic. Maybe. I think.
> 
> Sorry for the gap! Part 2 is definitely a lot more, so this is a breather-ish chapter that's also introducing some stuff that totally won't be useful later. I'm doing my best to lay out everything pretty carefully so I don't miss too much details, and there'll be more updates -- probably less frequent than usual, however. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Per usual, if you want to - please leave a comment!


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